| SPOTLIGHT |
The High Court has re-issued an injunction against protests being held outside a primary school, ahead of a trial on the issue between 22nd and 31st July.
Last month (31st May), Birmingham City Council successfully applied for a temporary injunction against protesters who had been gathering for some weeks outside Anderton Park Primary School in a row over ‘LGBT lessons’ for primary school pupils. The protesters – some of whom did not have children at the school – said that the lessons are not "age appropriate" and that they contradicted Islam.
The local authority said it had decided to make an urgent application “only after careful consideration and in the light of increasing fears for the safety and wellbeing of the staff, children and parents” of the school when they come back from their half-term break. This is particularly so after the serious escalation of the protests in the week before half-term - including the attendance of very large numbers of people who have no children at the school, many of whom are not from the city,” it added.
At the High Court, this morning, Mr Justice Warby QC quashed the original injunction keeping protesters from the school and imposed a similar order until the trial. He said: "I find it likely the claimant [Birmingham City Council] will establish at trial some of the protesting has gone beyond lawful limits and strayed into harassing, alarming or distressing conduct, through its persistence, timing and context."
