UK religious freedom case a godsend for Folau

A uni bans a Christian student for posting anti-gay Bible verses. Three judges ruled the uni was wrong.

Felix Ngole has won a landmark case in the UK with implications for Israel Folau’s case against Rugby Australia.

A British university that banished a Christian student from its social work course after he posted a ­series of anti-same-sex marriage Bible verses on Facebook has been ordered to reconsider its decision in a landmark judgment by Britain’s Court of Appeal.

“The university wrongly confused the expression of religious views with the notion of discrim­ination,” the three High Court ­appeal judges concluded yesterday. “The mere expression of views on theological grounds (for example, that ‘homosexuality is a sin’) does not necessarily connote that the person expressing such views will discriminate on such grounds.”

Christian lobby groups in Australia have seized upon the judgment as a win for freedom of religious expression, saying it could be “manna from heaven” for sacked former rugby union star Israel Folau in his legal battle against Rugby Australia.

They say the four-year legal battle waged by Felix Ngole against the University of Sheffield bears similarities to Folau’s experience after he was sacked by RA over his biblical “go to hell” post in April.

“This will send chills down the spine of Rugby Australia,’’ Human Rights Law Alliance chief John Steenhofsaid yesterday.

“Israel Folau and his team will be thanking God for divine ­providence.’’

University bosses said Mr Ngole, who lives in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, had posted “derogatory” remarks about homosexuals and bisexuals in a series of Old Testament quotes posted on his Facebook account in 2015.

This included his post that homosexuality was “a wicked act and God hates the act”.

He also warned homosexuals they would be punished by “eternal fire”: “If a man lies with a male as with a woman both of them have committed an abomination. Leviticus 18:22.”

During an appeal in 2015, the university argued that 41-year-old Mr Ngole had shown “no insight” into why his post could be perceived as “offensive”. It also found his “discriminatory” hard line religious views raised concerns about his “fitness to practise” as a social worker.

This amounted to a breach of his professional guidelines, the university said, leaving it no choice but to remove him from his postgraduate social work course.

Mr Ngole told the university he was being “punished” for his faith and administrators had effectively demanded he ­renounce his Christian beliefs or accept the career-ending consequences.

“This is like the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany,” Mr Ngole wrote at the time.

“I have been removed from the course for the expression of the Orthodox Christian viewpoint … that homosexuality is a sin in the Bible.’’

In 2017, Mr Ngole’s case went before deputy High Court judge Rowena Collins Rice, who concluded the university had acted within the law.

That ruling was overturned yesterday when the three judges found the university’s disciplinary proceedings had been flawed and ordered the university to reconsider Mr Ngole’s case.

They found the university had adopted such an entrenched position from the start that it had failed to ever consider a compromise.

Neil Foster, an associate professor at Newcastle Law School and an evangelical Christian, said the court had gone to the heart of the religious freedom debate.

The university’s “astonishing proposition”, he said, was that a Christian social worker, or any worker in health and social ser­vices who expressed anti-same-sex views, even in a church, could be removed from their position.