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Associative Discrimination

An Employment Appeal Tribunal ruling today means all carers are now protected by anti-discrimination legislation in the workplace.

The decision is another important and far reaching development in the long running legal battle in the case of Coleman v Attridge Law.

Read the background to the case from July 2008.

Carer and employee Sharon Coleman took her employer, Attridge Law, to court alleging disability discrimination and constructive dismissal, which she believed occurred as a result of her caring responsibilities for her disabled son.

The European Court of Justice had previously outlawed associative discrimination in that the EU's anti-discrimination laws, which protect disabled people in the workplace, cover their carers as well. A British employment tribunal had referred the case to the European Court of Justice in 2007.

While public sector workers were able to rely on the European Equal Treatment Framework Directive immediately to protect their rights, private sector workers could not do so. Instead, they had to rely on the UK 's own domestic discrimination law- the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), which did not seem to accommodate the ECJ's interpretation of the Framework Directive.

After the ECJ judgment the tribunal was persuaded words could be read into the Disability Discrimination Act to outlaw associative discrimination but that decision was not binding on other tribunals. Attridge Law appealed, on the basis that the tribunal had “distorted and rewritten” the DDA but the appeal was dismissed.

The decision finally puts an end to the long running dispute about whether all workers – whether private or public sector - are protected from direct discrimination or harassment because of an association they may possibly have with a disabled person.
 
This decision will benefit many thousands of carers as it will be binding and will have to be taken into account in legal cases from now on.

Employers are advised to check their HR policies in the light of this ruling to ensure their anti-harassment, anti-discrimination, equal opportunity and absence policies comply.

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