Employment law brief: 23 January 2014

Some things drive you mad, even without a formal certificate as a grumpy old man. As if discrimination law was not difficult enough already, the Supreme Court at the end of December handed down judgment in Bull v Hall [2013] UKSC 73, [2013] All ER (D) 307 (Nov) and in doing so split 3–2 on the fundamental meaning of direct discrimination. Those of us having to struggle with the Equality Act 2010 need this like the proverbial cranial cavity. This was the newsworthy gay-couple-in-the-Christian-hotel case, which makes it sound like a successor to the brides-in-the-bath case, but less politically correct. The pity legally is that all five justices agreed that this was a case of indirect discrimination which (under both domestic and human rights law) was not justified, which was enough to decide the case in the claimants’ favour, but three of them then decided that it could also be squeezed into direct discrimination. Lord Neuberger’s judgment contains a rather tart criticism of this