Religious bodies need to temper emotion & abide by the general law, says Geoffrey Bindman
I have written in these columns about the origin of my interest in equality law—law which seeks to restrain unfair discrimination by those who control the allocation of employment, housing, education, and other benefits and services. My professional involvement began when I was appointed legal adviser to the Race Relations Board following its creation by our earliest anti-discrimination law: the Race Relations Act 1965.
Since 1965 we have had a plethora of piecemeal legislation—hopefully soon to be consolidated—extending the scope of the law to other grounds of discrimination; gender, disability, sexual orientation, and, recently, religion. Many of the major problems of interpretation have been resolved in the courts but new and unforeseen problems continue to arise. Race remains the most intractable form of discrimination and the recent extension of the scope of equality law to religious discrimination has exposed tensions.
The recent Jewish Free School (JFS) case, one of the first to be decided by the Supreme Court
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