Case Review: Omooba v Michael Garrett Associates Ltd (T/A Global Artists) and another [2024] EAT 30. 

This Employment Appeal Tribunal case held that there had been no direct religion or belief discrimination or harassment when a Christian actor was dismissed from a role, following a social media storm over her publicly expressed beliefs that homosexuality is a sin.

Facts of the Case

Ms Omooba, a Christian actor who made a public Facebook post setting out her beliefs on homosexuality, stating that homosexual desires are a sin and that a person cannot be born gay.

Then in January 2019, Ms Omooba was cast in the role of Celie, in the production of “The Colour Purple”, in which she was set to play a lesbian character.   Shortly after the cast was announced, her historic Facebook post was shared on social media, leading to a "social media storm" criticising both Ms Omooba and the planned production for having cast her.

Both the theatre and the Claimant’s agency, terminated their contracts with Ms Omooba. The theatre offered to pay Ms Omooba the money due under her contract with it.

Ms Omooba brought claims including direct religion or belief discrimination and harassment against the theatre and the agency and breach of contract against the theatre. Ms Omooba stated in her witness statement that she would never have played the part of Celie due to her beliefs and would have resigned from the role in due course had she not been dismissed.

Tribunal decision

An employment tribunal rejected Ms Omooba’ s claims.  It held that Ms Omooba’ s religious belief was not the reason why the theatre terminated her contract. The social media storm meant that the play’s director was concerned that Ms Omooba’ s would not be convincing in her portrayal and there were also concerns that some members of the audience might disrupt the performance, or worse the production would be boycotted.  

The Appeal Tribunal concluded that the theatre's decision to terminate was because of the impact the social media storm would have on the production, and on its commercial viability, not because of Ms Omooba’ s beliefs.  Similarly, the tribunal found that Ms Omooba’ s religious beliefs were not the reason why the agency terminated her contract: it was the commercial risk to its business.

The tribunal dismissed Ms Omooba’ s harassment claims.  The tribunal made a costs award against Ms Omooba, finding that her claims had no reasonable prospect of success from the outset, or that they had no reasonable prospect once she realised that she would never in fact have played the role of Celie, and that the conduct of the claims was unreasonable. The Tribunal took into account the availability to Ms Omooba of financial support from the Christian Legal Centre (CLC) and Christian Concern Ltd (CCL), who had provided her with representation and were deeply invested in bringing and continuing the claims.

If you'd like assistance in relation to the issues raised please do contact Carrie Beaumont at cbeaumont@ortolan.com