Discrimination – Page 2 – Law Journals

Discrimination: Removing employment barriers for Muslim women

Ambiguous legal protection and subconscious bias by recruiters are making it difficult for Muslim women who wear a headscarf to find work. Arpita Dutt and Rolleen McDonnell investigate ‘The requirements of one’s faith cannot be applied outside work but “politely discarded” during working hours. It would be wrong to suppose that, whereas one’s sex and …

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Discrimination: Heels, hemlines and headscarves

Sarah Fitzpatrick considers the legislation and recent decisions on dress codes in the workplace ‘Dress codes can give rise to claims of unlawful discrimination on a number of grounds, including sex, religion and, not quite so commonly, disability and gender reassignment.’Over the last few months the media have featured a number of dress-code stories, including …

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Discrimination Law: Uncharted territory

Three recent decisions have pushed the boundaries of who can bring discrimination claims, write Tabitha Georghiou and Matthew Ramsey ‘A new era has dawned for discrimination law. Employment practitioners must learn to focus primarily on why the offending conduct took place.’ Discrimination law has traditionally been seen as a means of protecting individuals who fall …

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Discrimination Law: Managing competing workplace rights

Catherine McGrath sets out recent case law on the conflict between sexual orientation and religious rights at work ‘When faced with competing rights and interests, the courts have to undertake a careful balancing exercise and are afforded wide discretion when considering conflicting ECHR rights.’ On 19 May 2015 the Northern Ireland County Court handed down …

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Discrimination: Court of Appeal gives guidance on admitting background evidence

Christopher Tutton welcomes a new decision enabling tribunals to exclude evidence from discrimination cases if it is of only marginal relevance ‘Tribunals should be more inclined to exclude peripheral evidence, which they may previously have allowed due to a trivial link to the matters in contention, and focus more on the core issues.’The Court of …

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Discrimination Law: Is obesity the new disability?

Alexandra Mizzi analyses the ECJ’s decision on whether an obese childminder could bring a discrimination claim ‘Despite the controversy, the decision that a severely obese worker cannot bring a discrimination claim does not establish any radical new principle in UK employment law. It may, however, have some interesting practical implications.’ Just before the festive season …

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Discrimination Questionnaires: Gone but not forgotten?

Sharon Tan and Paul McGrath weigh up the impact of the abolition of the statutory discrimination questionnaire regime and the introduction of new non-statutory Acas guidance ‘Prospective responders should not see the abolition of the statutory regime as a “green light” to ignore questions or information requests.’ The statutory questionnaire procedure has been a familiar …

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Discrimination: Illegal contracts and harassment claims

An employee who did not have a work permit will not be barred from bringing a claim under the Equality Act, reports Kate Barker ‘The tribunal noted that, as in Vakante, this [Wijesundera] was a situation where the employment situation was unlawful “from top to bottom and from beginning to end”.’ In Wijesundera v Heathrow …

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Discrimination: UK must change law on political beliefs

The European Court of Human Rights has held that the UK must protect employees from dismissal on grounds of political affiliation or beliefs, write Liam Kerr and Abbie McCreath If political affiliation was a protected characteristic and Mr Redfearn’s dismissal was because of his philosophical belief or political affiliation, it would not be possible for …

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Discrimination: Is it time to legislate on caste?

Katharine McPherson and Katherine Shaw weigh up whether the government needs to amend the Equality Act to make clear that it prohibits caste discrimination ‘Given the complexities in defining caste, there is no obvious answer as to where caste belongs within the definitions used in the Equality Act 2010.’ The case of Begraj v Heer …

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