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Ladele case decision will perpetuate discrimination
• JUDGE Elias, president of the Employment Appeals Tribunal gave an analogy, in his judgment on the Lillian Ladele case, of someone with a religious conviction being allowed to follow his or her conscience being the same as an anarchist being allowed to plant a bomb in a public place (Registrar ‘failed to do her job’, December 24).
This is an absurd comparison, and if this is an example of his judicial thinking the surprise is not that this is his last judgment before stepping down but that there had ever been a first. The fact that this extraordinary statement was made in the opening address would seem to indicate that the case had already been prejudged and the final decision had been taken beforehand.
Religious belief is not a “private” matter as people do not leave their convictions at home any more than they do their sexuality. The equality legislation specifically granted protection in the workplace to people and placed the burden of responsibility upon the employer to ensure there is no conflict. This is a provision that Judge Elias has sought to undermine.
The consequences of this decision could be very far-reaching, for now any employer will be able to claim that someone who has a guiding religious belief can be excluded from large areas of work as being “incompatible” with other overall requirements. Discrimination is the very thing this law sought to prevent.
There will have to be further full hearing at the Court of Appeal, as the flawed reasoning in this case is clearly unsatisfactory and cannot be allowed to stand.
John McPartlin
Highbury Grove
N5
Stereotypical ‘old buffer’
• Anarchism is the pursuit of freedom for the individual. It is a social order where no group shall be governed by another group. To confuse it with bomb-throwing terrorism, as the Ladele case’s Justice Elias did, reinforces the idea of how out of touch these old buffer judges are.
Jim Pennington
Mount View Road
N4 |
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