ENOCH BURKE HAS lost a High Court action appealing an order for him to stay away from Wilson’s Hospital School.

Mr Justice Mark Sanfey said today that the schoolteacher “is being required to do no more than any other litigant – to obey the orders of the court”, and that he doesn’t get to “pick and choose” which orders he complies with.

Burke was released from prison last month having been jailed last September for contempt of court. The release was ordered after the school had closed for the summer holidays.

He had challenged the original order made in May 2023 by Mr Justice Alex Owens who granted Wilson’s Hospital a permanent injunction, restraining Burke from being near the school.

Burke argued that that the judge had disregarded his constitutional rights of freedom of conscience and freedom to practice his religion when he was punished for refusing to comply with the school’s direction to call a then-pupil by their preferred name and use “they/them” pronouns.

Judge Sanfey said Burke’s application “falls so far short of the ‘truly exceptional’ circumstances in which the court might entertain an application to set aside a final order that I consider

In Mr Alex White SC submissions on behalf of the Board, he said that Burke’s
application was “entirely unsustainable”, “devoid of merit” and “bound to fail”.

He described the application as “an impermissible attempt to lodge an attack on [the judgment of Owens J masquerading as, effectively…an attempt to set up a proxy appeal of another judge’s judgment, properly made and issued”.

Judge Sanfey agreed with White, who called it “an abuse of the processes of this Court”. 

“Mr Burke, as we have seen, contends that “two years of my life have been taken from
me”. This presumably is a reference to his suspension and his lengthy periods of
imprisonment for contempt,” Judge Sanfey said.

“As it happened, I released Mr Burke from prison on 28 June 2024 notwithstanding that he had continued to refuse to purge his contempt. I reminded him that the order of Owens J remains valid, and that he must comply with it.

“He has been imprisoned because he chooses not to obey the order of the court – the very same court which he now expects to come to his aid and uphold his allegations of breach of his constitutional rights, notwithstanding his refusal to contest the original trial or to appeal the judgment of the court.”