Chondol v Liverpool City Council EAT/0298/08

religion or belief discrimination | direct discrimination | promotion of religious beliefs

The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has held that a social worker who was dismissed for promoting his religious beliefs to service users did not suffer religion or belief discrimination.

Mr Chondol, who is a committed Christian, was a social worker at Liverpool City Council. The employer commenced disciplinary proceedings when it emerged that he had given a Bible to one service user and had attempted to promote his religious beliefs to another service user who had subsequently made a complaint. The employer clearly prohibited staff from overtly promoting their religious beliefs in the course of their employment. Mr Chondol was dismissed on various grounds, including his failure to follow a reasonable management instruction not to promote his religious beliefs. He brought a claim of, among other things, direct religious discrimination.

An employment tribunal found that Mr Chondol was not dismissed on the ground of his religion, but rather on the ground that he was improperly foisting it on service users. The employer would have reached the same conclusion and acted in precisely the same way regardless of what religion it believed was being promoted or indeed what view (religious or otherwise) was being promoted.

The EAT agreed. The fundamental issue is the reason why the claimant was less favourably treated. The tribunal had drawn a valid distinction between treating someone less favourably because of his or her religious beliefs and less favourable treatment for improperly promoting those beliefs. The issue of the correct comparator then becomes academic, but it would be a person who, in the course of his or her contact with service users, inappropriately promoted any religious belief or other strong personal view.

Case transcript of Chondol v Liverpool City Council (Microsoft Word format, 95.5K) (on the EAT website)

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