SW News: An evangelical Christian teacher who was jailed for his refusal to use gender-neutral pronouns is in prison again after refusing to stay away from school despite being told to do so by the authorities. Enoch Burke has been refused a High Court injunction which would have paved the way for his release from prison and his return to the school which placed him on paid suspension pending disciplinary action.

Burke was back in Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison where he has been held for more than a week for breaching a court order not to teach at Wilson’s Hospital School in Co Westmeath. He had been suspended on August 24 for refusing to address a transitioning student as ‘they’ rather than ‘he,’ citing his Christian beliefs which are against gender ideology.

Burke, who represented himself at Dublin’s High Court, said that he was being persecuted for his Christian faith. When asked by Judge Eileen Roberts if he would abide by the order, he said: “I cannot do that. I go back to jail as a law-abiding citizen of the state always. But God first.”

Justice Roberts said she was convinced Burke had not made out a strong case for the orders sought and that the balance of convenience was against granting them. She ruled that three of the injunctions sought, which aimed to restrain the disciplinary process against the teacher, did not need to be addressed now in light of Wilson Hospital School’s undertaking not to take further steps in that process without giving three days' notice to Burke of any such steps.

The judge added that his complaints about the legality of the decisions to put him on paid administrative leave and to invoke disciplinary action could not be addressed during the injunctions and would be decided at the full hearing of the proceedings between him and the school.