“My desire to see fair and balanced coverage of trans people and issues in the [Times newspaper] has led to me being viewed as difficult or troublesome,” she said in her statement.

In one example, she noted that the Times reported on the eminent scientist Kate Stone's serious injury by a stag by also mentioning in the headline that she was trans, even though it was irrelevant to the story. According to O’Donnell, the editor she emailed responded by saying that it “was just colour” and “the woman had outed herself anyway by mentioning the fact” that she was trans in a speech. The Times, she said, later changed the headline.

On another occasion in 2014, she wrote to Witherow about a “virulently transphobic” opinion piece by a freelancer who had previously said they would refuse treatment from a GP if they were trans. Although the article was not published, the fact that it was commissioned and considered for publication concerned O’Donnell. She said she was also alarmed that Witherow did not respond to the email.

At the tribunal, however, Callan countered that opinion articles were meant to “stimulate debate”. The Times’ counsel also referred to an internal email from Witherow to the assistant comment editor referring to O’Donnell’s note: “Does she not have a point?” How, the lawyer asked O’Donnell, does that violate your dignity?

“When I read this piece,” began O’Donnell, “it made me cry … it was such a foul piece, and derogatory” about trans people to the extent that it led her to wonder, “How can my editors not see that this is an awful thing?”

“Subsequent to this,” she added in her witness statement, “I noted that Mr Witherow effectively ceased to speak with me.” But the Times’ counsel said this was due to her not being senior enough for Witherow to need to speak to her. Previously he had, O’Donnell replied.

In 2016, O’Donnell also wrote to Rebekah Brooks, the CEO of News UK (the parent company of the Times), to complain about a column by Jeremy Clarkson which, according to her witness statement, characterised trans people “as prostitutes and criminals and NHS-swindling fantasists and attacked the parents of a trans child”.

She said that “the culture within the company was faulty when bigoted arguments and inaccuracies went unchallenged by editors”. This, she wrote, “contributed towards making life for trans people even harder than it already was” and concluded, “I found it personally degrading.”

Although Brooks referred her on to the managing editor, she asked O’Donnell by return email if everything else was OK.

“I replied that… there was a problem with the culture in the company as a whole in relation to trans people and my experience suggested that the company could not guarantee me or any future trans employee of the company equality of opportunity in an atmosphere free from discrimination,” O'Donnell said.

O’Donnell alleges that after this, there was an increase in negative reporting on trans people, prompting her to again email Witherow in March 2017 about a column by Michael Gove, alleging “factual mistakes” in it, and again in August 2017 to both the editor and his deputy after “six negative inaccurate pieces about trans people appeared in the Times within two weeks”.

One of those, O’Donnell wrote, centred on a report framed as a scientific study because it was written by a former employee of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health but was, in fact, published in an “evangelical Christian magazine” and was “so discredited as to be publicly disowned by the faculty”. The article did not mention this. As such, she said in her witness statement, it was a “failure of journalism”.

In October 2017, O’Donnell again raised her “increasing alarm over the volume, tenor, and journalistic failures of the paper’s coverage of trans issues” in a meeting with her line manager, according to her statement. “I told him that as in individual, I felt under siege.” By which point, she said in her statement, the manager had emailed a member of HR, saying, “Feel free to contact Kathy if you have the time/energy/courage/patience.”

She was made redundant soon after, which O’Donnell claims was unfair.

In her witness statement, she also said that during her time at the Times, as a result of the “stress and humiliation due to the company’s treatment, I suffered an episode of clinical depression that lasted for a year”.

The case comes amid an unprecedented period in the British media in its volume of stories regarding transgender people. Many outlets, including the Times, the Guardian, the Mail, the Sun, the Telegraph, and the New Statesman have received criticism from trans campaigners for their coverage.

If O’Donnell wins, it could also set a precedent for news covering a range of minorities that are protected under the Equality Act 2010 from discrimination and abuse: gay people, disabled people, BAME people, and those from different faiths.