Equality, diversity and human rights >
Sex discrimination
In Chief Constable of Avon & Somerset Constabulary v Chew, the EAT upholds an employment tribunal's decision that a female police officer who wanted to work part time suffered indirect sex discrimination because her childcare commitments meant she could not comply with a requirement that part-timers must work shifts in accordance with their department's duty roster patterns.
The Court of Appeal gives important guidance on how far tribunals need to go in exploring the circumstances of a claim. Plus cases on protected disclosure, redundancy selection, discrimination by an agent, working time exemptions and constructive dismissal.
In HM Prison Service v Salmon, the EAT upholds an award of £20,000 for injury to feelings, including £5,000 aggravated damages, and a separate, undiscounted award of £15,000 for psychiatric injury, made by an employment tribunal that had partially upheld a former prison officer's complaint of unlawful sex discrimination.
In Anirah v Asda Stores Ltd a Stratford employment tribunal (Chair: V K Gay) rejects an employer's defence that in creating and publishing an equality policy and training its staff, it had taken such steps as were reasonably practicable to prevent one of its male managers from discriminating on the grounds of sex.
The EAT has ruled, in Chief Constable of West Yorkshire v Vento, that evidence of the treatment afforded to comparators in similar, even if not the same situations, can be relied upon as evidence of how a hypothetical comparator would have been treated.
In Lockwood v Crawley Warren Group Ltd the EAT has ruled that an employer applied a requirement or condition when it turned down a new mother's request to work at home.
Despite the fact that, in appointing a "special adviser", the Lord Chancellor had applied a requirement that any appointee should be personally known to him, there was no disproportionate impact on gender or racial grounds, notwithstanding the fact that the Lord Chancellor's "area of association" was likely to be "skewed" against women and ethnic minorities, holds the EAT in The Lord Chancellor and another v Coker and Osamor.
In Pell v Wagstaff and Wheatley Hotel [2000] ET/2801882/99, an employment tribunal found that Mr Pell had been less favourably treated on the grounds of his sex when he was turned down for a job because he refused to cut his long hair.
In Abrahamsson and Anderson v Fogelqvist the European Court of Justice rules that provisions of Swedish legislation intended to address the underrepresentation of women in university appointments were precluded by EC equal treatment legislation.
In Canniffe v East Riding of Yorkshire Council, the EAT holds that the proper approach to the employer's statutory defence to vicarious liability for unlawful discrimination is, first, to identify whether or not the employer took any steps at all to prevent the employee, for whom it is vicariously liable, from doing the act or acts complained of in the course of his or her employment; and secondly, having identified what steps, if any, the employer took, to consider whether or not there were any further steps, that it could have taken, which were reasonably practicable.
Employment law cases: HR and legal information and guidance relating to sex discrimination.