Hale at Yale

There should be a general defence of justification in discrimination law, Lady Hale, Justice of the Supreme Court has said.

In a speech on “religion and sexual orientation: the clash of equality rights” at Yale Law School this month, Lady Hale explored differences in approach between the EU and the European Convention on Human Rights, to human rights law and direct and indirect discrimination.

She suggested that there could be “a general defence of justification in discrimination law, so that courts and tribunals could get down to addressing the real issues—legitimate aim, rational connection, proportionality—rather than looking for distinctions which mean that they hold that there was no discrimination at all. 

“The problem has become more acute now that we have so many more protected characteristics which may well conflict with one another, in particular religious belief and sexual orientation.”