Marital Discrimination – ET Failed to Ask the Right Question

To treat employees unfavourably because they are married amounts, unsurprisingly, to unlawful discrimination. However, as one case showed, proving a causal link between such treatment and marital status can be highly demanding.

The case concerned a bookkeeper who was married…

Jan 20, 2023

The case concerned a bookkeeper who was married to the principal shareholder of the company for which she worked. After their relationship ended in acrimonious divorce, she was dismissed by the company’s managing director (MD). An Employment Tribunal (ET) subsequently upheld her complaint that the MD had discriminated against her because she was married.

In its decision, the ET found that the MD had sided with her husband in making false allegations against her and dismissing her on spurious grounds. She was wrongly accused of misusing the company’s IT system and, at one point, a wholly baseless complaint was made against her to the police. She was stripped of her directorship and was not paid dividends that were due to her.

In upholding the MD’s challenge to the ET’s ruling, however, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) found that the ET had failed properly to address the issue of whether it was her marital status that was the cause of her unfavourable treatment, as opposed to the fact that she was married to the shareholder.

The question was not whether she was badly treated because she was married to a particular person. The ET had failed to construct an appropriate comparator or to ask itself whether a hypothetical person in a close relationship with the shareholder, but not married to him, would have been treated any differently.

The EAT reached its conclusion with a heavy heart. The ET’s conclusion that she had been very badly treated by the MD, amongst others, could not be challenged. It had nevertheless failed to address its mind to the true issues in the case and its finding that the MD had subjected her to marital discrimination, contrary to Section 13(4) of the Equality Act 2010, could not stand.

Coarse Language in the Workplace – ET Upholds Harassment Claim

Even if the kind of coarse language used in traditionally male-dominated workplaces was once acceptable, it certainly is not today. An Employment Tribunal (ET) made that point in awarding substantial damages to an office administrator who was harassed by her foul-mouthed line manager. The woman worked at a lambskin processing plant, next to an abattoir. She resigned after less than a year in the job, citing what she viewed as her manager’s unacceptable, unpleasant and harassing behaviour. She…

Employer Did Not Have Constructive Knowledge of Disability

Under Section 15(2) of the Equality Act 2010, an employer has a defence to a claim of disability discrimination if it can show that it did not know, and could not reasonably have been expected to know, that the claimant had the disability in question. The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) recently heard an appeal against a decision of the Employment Tribunal (ET) that an employer had met this test. A man brought a disability discrimination claim against a bank after it allegedly refused to…

ET Lay Member’s LinkedIn Posts Give Rise to Allegation of Apparent Bias

Anyone who serves in a judicial capacity must exercise the greatest care in their use of social media. The point was made by the case of a lay member of an Employment Tribunal (ET) whose posts on LinkedIn gave rise to an allegation of apparent bias. The member was one of an ET panel of three which upheld a woman’s complaints of sexual harassment, sex discrimination, victimisation and unfair dismissal against her former employer. The company was ordered to pay her more than £86,000 in…