Intervention at European Court of Human Rights
The National Secular Society has intervened at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to argue that Britain's equality laws should be upheld and not compromised by religious exemptions.
We argue that the four cases of Eweida, Chaplin, Ladele and McFarlane, all relating to alleged religious discrimination in the workplace, were correctly dismissed by the UK courts.
Eweida and Chaplin concern the wearing of crosses at work. Ladele was an Islington registrar and McFarlane a Relate councillor, both of whom objected on religious grounds to dealing with same sex couples. All four are applying to the European Court of Human Rights claiming that the dismissal of their cases was in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights and that the UK law must therefore be changed.
We believe any further accommodation of religious conscience in UK equality law would create a damaging hierarchy of rights, with religion at the top. Any change to the law to increase religious accommodation — as most if not all other interveners are calling for — stands the risk of seriously undermining UK equality law.
This is likely to be a landmark case determining the future direction of equality law in the UK, and potentially also in Europe.
In the cases of Ladele and McFarlane, the rights of gay people are placed at risk if it is decided that 'reasonable accommodation' is acceptable when religious people provide (or refuse to provide) services to them. We have argued that such accommodations are humiliating and unacceptable.
In the case of the wearing of religious symbols at work — Eweida and Chaplin — we think the English courts reached the correct decisions taking into account the particular circumstances. We argue strongly that there should be no blanket permission for religious people to be able to disregard uniform policies or health and safety regulations in the workplace.
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Notes:
The application numbers of the cases to be heard in the European Court of Human Rights are:
Nadia Eweida & Shirley Chaplin against the United Kingdom (Application numbers 48420/10 and 59842/10)
Lillian Ladele and Gary McFarlane against the United Kingdom (Application numbers 51671/10 and 36516/10)