A court of appeal has given judgement, proscribing the prosecution of “non crime hate speech”.
It all started after a former police officer, Harry Miller, wrote a tweet, describing himself as “gender critical”.
The tweet was reported, leading to the police questioning him at his work place, regarding his tweet as a transphobic hate incident.
Harry Miller took the case up in court, sueing the Humberside Police and the College of Policing guidance.
The court in a recent ruling passed that Humberside Police’s actions were a “disproportionate interference” with Harry Miller’s right to freedom of expression.
This further lead the College of Policing guidance to updating “a strong warning against police taking a disproportionate response to reports of a non-crime hate incident”.
Many saw the court ruling and updates on the College of Policing guidance as a ground breaking freedom, protecting individual freedom of expression both offline and online.
As Toby Young, curled from Guido Fawkes, would say:
“The Free Speech Union is proud to have played a part in winning this landmark victory, but the lion’s share of the credit must go to Harry Miller. Thanks to his courage and tenacity, we can all rest a little easier in our beds tonight, knowing the police are not about to knock on our doors because we’ve made an inappropriate joke on Twitter. They should be policing our streets, not our tweets.”