Sex discrimination

New and updated

• Date:

  1 February 2002

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Discrimination: No indirect discrimination in appointing employee who was personally known to the employer

  In Coker and Osamor v The Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chancellor's Department, the Court of Appeal holds that where an appointment is made from a close circle of family or friends, this will rarely constitute indirect discrimination as the vast majority of the relevant pool of potential candidates will be excluded. It will therefore not be possible to show that the requirement of personal knowledge has the disproportionate impact necessary to found a discrimination claim.

• Date:

  14 January 2002

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Sex discrimination: Shiftwork policy was unfair to woman with children

  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.

• Type:

  Employment law cases

  Tribunal may leave some stones unturned

  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.

• Date:

  1 July 2001

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Sex discrimination: Award of £20,000 for injury to feelings upheld

  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.

• Date:

  1 June 2001

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Defence rejected

  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.

• Type:

  FAQs

  Is it lawful for an employer to indicate that a vacancy is aimed at women if the job is advertised in a women's magazine?

• Type:

  FAQs

  Can an employer refuse an employee's request to return to work from maternity leave on a part-time basis?

• Date:

  1 March 2001

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Evidence of how comparator would be treated

  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.

• Date:

  1 March 2001

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Refusal of request to work at home

  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.

• Date:

  15 February 2001

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  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.