Religion or Belief Discrimination

June 11th, 2021 by James Goudie KC

In Forstater v CGD Europe , UKEAT/0105/20/JOJ, the claimant holds the belief that sex is immutable and not to be conflated with gender identity. The EAT holds that this a philosophical belief within Section 10 of the Equality Act 2010. It is protected by Articles 9 and 1 0 of the European Convention of Human Rights. The relevant principles are that (1) freedom of expression is one of the essential foundations of democratic society, (2) the paramount guiding principle in assessing any belief is that it is not for the Court to inquire into its validity, (3) the freedom to hold whatever belief one likes goes hand-in-hand with the State remaining neutral as between competing beliefs, and (4) a belief that has the protection of Article 9 is one that needs to satisfy only very modest threshold requirements.

Comments are closed.