Good intentions?

While discriminatory job advertisements have long been regarded as unlawful, only the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) can bring claims against their authors or publishers; individuals are currently barred from doing so. The justification for this is that an advertisement can only ever constitute an intent to discriminate rather than an act.

It may well have been decided that an advertisement for a “black or Asian woman” information centre worker for Cardiff 's Women's Aid, placed in the Guardian on 19 August 1992, was lawful under s 38 of the Race Relations Act 1976 (RRA 1976). However, the view of the Employment Apppeal Tribunal (EAT) in Cardiff Women's Aid v Hartup [1994] IRLR 390 was that any such lawful defence was “not something for us to decide” (per Judge Levy QC at para 8). Nor did it matter whether Hartup had applied for the job or not: “We do not think that it is necessary to decide on this point in the context of the decision we have