You may have read about the Northern Irish gay cake row which has been settled by the County court in Northern Ireland recently. A bakery was sued after it cancelled an order for a cake with an image and slogan “Support Gay Marriage” placed by a homosexual customer. The customer brought the case with the […]
Sarah King Employment Solicitor
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News – Discrimination
Uplift on injury to feelings awards
Having thought that the matter was quite settled following the Court of Appeal decision in Simmons v Castle [2012] which established that employment tribunal claims for injury to feelings were subject to the same 10% uplift as general damages in civil claims, we now have conflicting EAT decisions. In the latest EAT decision in the […]
Discriminatory bonuses
The Land Registry operated a bonus scheme which paid out £900 to eligible employees in 2012. One of the rules of the scheme was that those subject to a warning in respect of sickness absence during the relevant year were ineligible to receive a bonus. Those with disciplinary warnings could be ignored at the manager’s discretion […]
Obesity could be a disability
The awaited European Court of Justice decision has arrived. This has confirmed that EU law does not prohibit discrimination on the grounds of obesity but that conditions associated with the obesity could amount to a disability. The case set out a test where the long-term physical, mental or psychological impairments may hinder the full and […]
Reasonable adjustments
Following on from my earlier post on reasonable adjustments, there has been a recent EAT case concerning what is a reasonable adjustment in the workplace. In the case of Dyer v London Ambulance NHS Trust, the employee had a potentially life-threatening reaction to aerosols and perfume and answered 999 calls in a busy control room. […]
Discrimination and paternity pay
An Employment Tribunal has rejected a male employee’s claim for direct and indirect sex discrimination following his employer’s (Ford Motor Company) failure to pay enhanced additional paternity pay. The Tribunal rejected the employee’s argument that the correct comparator was a woman who was on maternity leave after 20 weeks following the birth of a child, […]
Dress Codes
Issues around dress and personal hygiene are always difficult conversations that many employers simply hate to have. Having a dress code in place spelling out what many would see as obvious can assist with ensuring that staff have a uniform approach to dress at work even if this is not a uniform in the traditional […]
Reasonable adjustments
The EAT has held that the employer in Dominique v Toll Global Forwarding Ltd had failed in its duty to make reasonable adjustments by not adjusting the redundancy selection criteria where a disabled employee was placed at a substantial disadvantage even though the adjustment to the criteria would not have made a difference to the outcome. […]
Reasonable adjustments
It has long been established that an employer is under a duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled employers. The case of Coleman v Attridge Law held that those with direct discrimination claims do not themselves need to be disabled but can be associated with a disabled person. In that case it was Mrs Coleman’s […]
Is size a disability?
At present I would argue there is no such provision in the Equality Act 2010 for protection against discrimination on the grounds of size. It is not widely perceived as a disability giving rise to protection or obliging employers to make reasonable adjustments to accommodate their larger work force. A test case is currently before […]
(Our news section brings you the latest news on published judgments and cases which are all in the public domain. We only comment on these published cases and not cases of our actual clients. Publication of the case or comments is a public service designed to make the courts and tribunals more accessible and ensures justice is seen to be done. This is why court and tribunal judgments are published publicly.)