Mr Trayhorn, a gardener/horticulturalist at HM Prison Littlehey, was also an ordained Pentecostal minister. At a service in the prison chapel in May 2014, he spoke to a congregation of prisoners about homosexuality as sinful and quoted 1 Corinthians 6:9–11. There had been a previous complaint by the LGBT co-ordinator about his comments during a service in February 2014 but no formal disciplinary action had been taken.; however, it emerged that he did not have the necessary counter-terrorism security clearance required under the Chaplaincy Volunteer Risk Assessment Policy and he was told not to preach at chapel services in future. He persisted, however, and after a further sermon a prisoner complained to the chaplain. Complaints were also made by two other prisoners and Mr Trayhorn was ultimately sacked. He was unsuccessful before an Employment Tribunal (ET), where he alleged indirect discrimination, arguing that he had been disadvantaged because he had been disciplined under the Policy for quoting and explaining a passage from the Bible. He complained about the way in which the Respondent's Equality of Treatment for Employees Policy was applied and claimed that there was an unwritten practice that discussions of homosexuality and the Christian view of sexual ethics were forbidden in the prison. He also argued that his European Convention rights under Article 9 (freedom of religion) and Article 10 (freedom of expression) had been infringed.

On appeal, he argued that the ET: (1) had erred in holding that his treatment was not because of or related to his religion or belief, because the test in paragraph 82 of Eweida & Ors v United Kingdom [2013] ECHR 37 was whether there was a sufficiently close and direct nexus between the act and the underlying belief; (2) had erred in relying on group disadvantage as a necessary condition for him to establish indirect discrimination, counsel asserting that, where Article 9 ECHR was engaged, proof of group disadvantage was not required; and (3) had failed to undertake a proper balancing act between his rights under Articles 9 and 10 and the proposed limitation of those rights, particularly in the light of the principle of church independence. Slade J dismissed the appeal. As to Ground 1, ‘because of’ and ‘related to’ were directed to the action of which complaint had been made rather than to the relationship between a religious belief and the manifestation of that belief. As to Ground 2, though the ET had referred to group disadvantage in the context of section 19(2)(b) of the Equality Act 2010, it had not reached its decision on that basis: on the facts, it had not been satisfied either that Mr Trayhorn had been disadvantaged as a Christian or that other Christians, whether singly or as a group, were disadvantaged. As to Ground 3, in holding that the application of the Prison Service's Discipline and Equalities Policies had been a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim, the ET had weighed in the balance any restraint on the expression of Mr Trayhorn's religious beliefs. The ET had not erred in considering section 19(2)(d) read together with Article 9 ECHR and had reached its decision on unchallenged findings of facts. [Frank Cranmer]