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Clash of rights & equalities

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22 October 2021 / Nicholas Dobson
Issue: 7953 / Categories: Features , Public , Human rights , Equality
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Nicholas Dobson considers whether equality law permits religious organisations to uphold their views on sexual ethics in the way they work
  • An independent evangelical Christian fostering agency, which recruits and supports carers for children in local authority care and which required its carers to ‘abstain from all sexual sins including… homosexual behaviour’, unlawfully discriminated against gay men and lesbians under both the Equality Act 2010 and the Human Rights Act 1998.

Not all rights and protected characteristics sit comfortably together. Sometimes there can be painful collisions. This was particularly apparent on 24 September 2021 when the Court of Appeal handed down its judgment in R (Cornerstone (North East) Adoption and Fostering Services Ltd v Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills (OFSTED) [2021] EWCA Civ 1390, [2021] All ER (D) 14 (Oct). For then, Peter Jackson LJ (with whom his colleagues Asplin and Nicola Davies LJJ agreed) found (for reasons similar but not identical to those of Knowles J below) that (in essence) Cornerstone, a Christian

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