Sunday discrimination clarifies faith claim

A religious belief need not be a “core component of the Christian faith” to establish a discrimination claim as long as it is “genuinely” held, the Court of Appeal has held in its ruling on Sunday working.

Celestina Mba resigned “with regret” from her position as a care-worker at a children’s home after her employer required her to work on Sundays, which she considers a day of rest and worship. She brought proceedings alleging constructive unfair dismissal and indirect religious discrimination.

In their judgments, the employment tribunal and employment appeal tribunal said Mba’s beliefs regarding Sundays were “not a core component” of her faith.

On appeal, however, in Mba v Merton Borough [2013] EWCA Civ 1562, Lord Justice Maurice Kay said: “The use of the disjunctive—‘religion or belief’—demonstrates that it is not necessary to pitch the comparison at a macro level. 

“Thus it is not necessary to establish that all or most Christians, or all or most non-conformist Christians, are or would be put at a particular disadvantage. It is permissible to define a claimant’s religion or belief more narrowly than that. In my judgment, this is where the employment tribunal went wrong.”

Nevertheless, the Court dismissed Mba’s appeal as, on the facts, it was proportionate for her employers to require her to work on a Sunday.

Michael Powner, partner at Charles Russell, says: “The judgment will attract criticism from Christian groups who perceive that recent cases balancing the Christian faith against other protected characteristics (such as sexual orientation) have gone too far in favour of the latter. It is of course likely to be welcomed by those employers in sectors requiring cover seven days a week because if Ms Mba had been successful, the consequences would have been far reaching and could have allowed people of other religions to refuse to work on certain days of religious significance.”