The Employment Court of New Zealand on Monday ordered the University of Auckland to pay damages of NZ$20,000 for breaching its contractual obligations to protect Associate Professor Siouxsie Wiles’s health and safety due to public harassment over her commentary during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Over the course of 2020-2022, Wiles, a microbiologist and science communicator, experienced physical confrontations and sustained and targeted harassment for her commentary on mainstream media, including the ‘doxing’ of her home address and other personal details.

Additive to breaching its contractual obligations, Judge J C Holden found that the University of Auckland breached its statutory duties of good faith and acting as a “good employer” under the Employment Relations Act 2000. This obligation was also present in Wiles’s collective employment agreement. 

Judge J C Holden found that despite the University of Auckland’s “efforts to comply with its health and safety obligations within the confines of its existent health and safety framework”, the University “breached its health and safety obligations to [Wiles] in that it failed to provide adequate protection and support to her.” The inadequacy of measures adopted, coupled with the perceived lack of support displayed by the University was determined to have brought Wiles “considerable distress.”

Academic freedom was, however, considered only to be “tangentially engaged” and not material to the case’s outcome, given the University’s actions did not amount to the suppression of new ideas or controversial opinions from the public.

In light of the university’s ongoing efforts to improve its responses to employment harassment and change in circumstances, Judge J C Holden declined to make formal recommendations.