Discrimination law is about to get more complicated. We already have nine different things that we cannot discriminate against each other for such as being married, sex, race, age and so on.
Until now aggrieved employees had to pick one quality from the list and stick with it. Now, if government proposals for the new Equality Bill are approved, employees will have the chance to make multiple discrimination claims.
Multiple discrimination claims will allow staff to pick two types of discrimination from the list. The move is needed, the government says, to make discrimination claims easier. The government’s Equalities Office gives an example of how the proposed multiple discrimination clauses in the bill might be used. One says currently a black woman would have to choose either sex or race discrimination if she needed to bring a claim.
Her employer might be able to point to other female staff or to black male staff and argue successfully that she was not discriminated against either sexually or racially. The new rules will allow her to claim that she has suffered discrimination because she is a black woman.
The discussion document concedes this might cause more headaches for employers – so proposes only to allow multiple discrimination claims for direct discrimination and exclude indirect discrimination. Indirect discrimination is where a policy applying to all staff has a disproportionately harsh affect on a protected grouping. Requiring all police officers to be over six feet tall, for example, would indirectly discriminate against women, because most of them are shorter.
The government has also attempted to simplify things by excluding some of the protected qualities from the multiple claims – such as marriage, disability and maternity related claims. It estimates that there will only be a tiny number of such claims.
The changes will take a while to be finalised and perhaps longer to become accustomed to. But the advice remains the same. Do not discriminate. Always use objective and transparent criteria when handling staff matters.
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