Equality, diversity and human rights
The principle of equal pay under Community law does not require that women should continue to receive full pay during maternity leave, holds the European Court of Justice in Gillespie and others v Northern Health and Social Services Board and others.
In Preston and others v Wolverhampton Healthcare NHS Trust and others (No.2) and Fletcher and others v Midland Bank plc (No.2) the House of Lords holds that the six-month limitation period laid down in s.2(4) of the Equal Pay Act 1970 does not breach the principle of equivalence.
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.
The meaning of "national origins" in the Race Relations Act 1976 is not limited to the concept of nationality in a legal sense, and thus to the citizenship that an individual may acquire at birth, holds the Inner House, Court of Session in BBC Scotland v Souster.
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 Abadeh v British Telecommunications plc the EAT holds that, for the purposes of the Disability Discrimination Act, the question of what constitutes a "normal day-to-day activity" must be addressed without regard to whether or not the activity is normal to the particular applicant.
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.
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