Welcome to this week's Coffee Break setting out the latest legal and practical developments impacting UK employers.
Tribunal finds discrimination and victimisation because of protected beliefs
Last week we reported on an Employment Appeal Tribunal decision which looked at the difficult issue of what constitutes a "belief" for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010 and again, drew a distinction between protected beliefs and how they manifest in the workplace in determining whether or not there has been unlawful discrimination.
This week has now seen an Employment Tribunal publish its decision in the much publicised Forstater case, finding that the claimant who held a "gender-critical" belief that "biological sex is real, important, immutable and not to be conflated with gender identity" did suffer unlawful direct discrimination (in the respondent failing to offer her an employment contract and renew her visiting lectureship) and victimisation (in the removal of her profile from a website) due to that belief. An earlier Employment Appeal Tribunal decision had held that her belief was protected.
The tribunal noted that, in line with existing case law, the relevant distinction to be made in determining direct discrimination was "between the holding of the protected belief and/or the manifestation of that belief in a way to which objection could not be justifiably taken on the one hand, versus the manifestation of the belief in a way to which objection could justifiably be...
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