Victoria von Wachter analyses the complex principles of discrimination
The latest cases involving harassment on grounds of an illegal reason have come to court. The problem here is how loose must the connection be between the insult and the victim, before the thread of causation is broken.
The majority of the discrimination statutes or statutory instruments have provision for the outlawing of discrimination or harassment “on grounds of” whatever the prohibited reason is. The exception is disability which makes it unlawful to harass an individual “for a reason that relates to the disabled person’s disability”.
Harassment is defined as: “Unwanted conduct that has the purpose or effect of violating a person’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for the victim.” This is subject to a test of reasonableness but taking into account the perception of the victim. The judiciary has been exercised for some time on the extent to which “on grounds of” can be stretched to accommodate the cases that have been trotted
