Holyrood Magazine meets with Naomi Cunningham for International Women’s Day Feature

Scotland’s leading political and current affairs publication, Holyrood, has interviewed women’s rights barrister Naomi Cunningham for their latest International Women’s Day feature.

Instructed on yet another prominent case relating to the issue of sex and gender, Naomi Cunningham has carved herself a niche career acting for those accused of discrimination based on their protected ‘gender-based’ beliefs. The latest employment tribunal, Peggie v Fife Health Board, has reignited a political debate in both Holyrood and Westminster, and Holyrood magazine invited Naomi for an interview to find out more about her motivation to defend cases such as these, and her rise to fame in this arena.

Naomi tells Holyrood Editor, Mandy Rhodes, that the whole debate is simply a matter of ‘fact versus fiction’ before recounting the story of how she ended up taking on one of the hottest cases of the moment.

Naomi has already resisted an attempt by Fife health board for this case to be heard in private (see case summary here). She previously acted for Roz Adams, who won her case against Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre for constructive dismissal for believing that victims of rape should be able to know the biological sex of staff at the centre. Adams was awarded £70,000. She also successfully represented social worker Rachel Meade, who was suspended by Westminster City Council for private social media posts that included gender-critical beliefs. She was awarded £58,000. Naomi also acted for social worker Lizzy Pitt, who was suspended from her workplace (Cambridgeshire County Council) LGBT network for expressing gender critical views. On the morning of the employment tribunal, the council accepted liability and agreed to pay Pitt £54,000 in compensation.

The Fife case is attracting particular attention given the battle between competing rights has been so fiercely fought in Scotland. Cunningham has, therefore, gained further prominence and as the chair of Sex Matters – the human rights charity founded by Maya Forstater, whose own employment tribunal became a test-case on belief discrimination – she has become something of a figurehead as a champion for women’s rights.

The 6-page printed spread includes a biographical summary of her journey, influences and achievements to date. Read the online version of this feature here.

Find out more

Naomi Cunningham has specialised in discrimination law, mainly but not exclusively in the employment context, throughout her career. In recent years, Naomi has developed a particular interest in the interaction between the Equality Act and the Gender Recognition Act, gender reassignment discrimination, the single-sex exceptions in the Equality Act, and the public sector equality duty. She gave evidence to the Women and Equalities Select Committee on reform of the GRA in February 2021, to the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee of the Scottish Parliament in June 2022, and again to the Women and Equalities Select Committee at Westminster in January 2023.

To find out more about Naomi, contact Nick Levett +44 (0)20 7427 4908 or Mark Gardner +44 (0)20 7427 4909 for a confidential discussion.

External Publications 10 Mar, 2025