The former professor argued that intellectual freedom protects him from termination due to misconduct
Physicist and ex-James Cook University (JCU) professor Peter Vincent Ridd has lost a High Court bid challenging his termination by the university over public comments he made about the Great Barrier Reef and climate change.
Ridd had argued that he was protected from termination by intellectual freedom granted to him through his enterprise agreement (EA) with JCU.
The court ruled that the intellectual freedom protected by the EA was not “a general freedom of speech,” and that “the only conduct that falls within the intellectual freedom in [the EA] is the expression of opinion within an area of academic expertise.”
“These constraints upon exercise included respect for the legal rights of others,” the court said.
Ridd’s case had hinged on the alleged inconsistency between the EA with JCU and the university’s Code of Conduct. JCU had fired Ridd in May 2018 on several grounds, including the grounds that he had breached the university’s directions and Code.
A 27-year employee of JCU, Ridd managed the university’s marine geophysical laboratory and had been appointed the physics head. His first censure for misconduct by JCU was over an e-mail he sent to a journalist in 2015, where he said that the research promoted by university stakeholders the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies was “unreliable” and “likely to be misleading.”
Ridd was again censured in 2017 after an interview with Sky News where he said that “we can no longer trust scientific organisations [like the ARC Centre],” describing the science as “not properly checked, tested or replicated.” He added that the scientists concerned were not “very objective about the science they do” and were “emotionally attached to their subject.”
While scientific research about the Great Barrier Reef was among his academic interests, JCU submitted that Ridd “was, and is, not a marine biologist or climate scientist.” The university determined that Ridd had violated its Code of Conduct because he “had damaged JCU’s reputation, and denigrated and damaged the reputations of its stakeholders.”
“The university does not accept that academic freedom justifies [Ridd’s criticisms],” JCU said.
Following disciplinary proceedings, Ridd initiated proceedings in the Federal Circuit Court (FCC). He said that the action taken against him was unlawful because it contravened the EA he had with JCU, which guaranteed “intellectual freedom.”
The FCC’s primary judge decided that the EA protected Ridd’s conduct and awarded him a $1.2m compensation; however, this decision was overturned by the Federal Court.
The High Court acknowledged parts of Ridd’s case, saying that “the [first] censure and part of the basis of the final censure were unjustified because they related to the expression of honestly held views by Ridd, within his academic expertise.” Moreover, the final censure was “justified only insofar as it relied upon expressions of opinion unrelated to Dr Ridd’s academic expertise, and findings that he repeatedly failed to comply with his confidentiality obligations.”
However, since Ridd ran his case on an “all-or-nothing basis,” the court concluded that JCU’s decision to terminate him was justified in its reliance on “findings of serious misconduct.”
