Sex and race discrimination: Appointment of "special adviser" did not amount to indirect discrimination

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 17.1.01 EAT 819/99 and 820/99. An employment tribunal's finding to the contrary involved drawing an illegitimate inference, and it had failed to identify properly the relevant pool for comparison. Indeed, in the unique circumstances of the case, said the EAT, no such pool could be identified, since in reality the Lord Chancellor had determined at the outset to appoint a particular individual and in effect discriminated against "everybody else", irrespective of gender or race.