Discrimination by Association Prohibited
by Jenny
The ECJ has today handed down a landmark decision in relation to the Equal Treatment Directive. The ECJ has held in Coleman v Attridge Law that Community law protects an employee who has suffered discrimination on the grounds of her child’s disability.
The case involves a legal secretary who worked for a law firm in London. She had a disabled child and made a claim to the Employment Tribunal that she was directly discriminated against and harrassed by her former employers because she had a disabled son. The Employment Tribunal referred the matter to the ECJ for clarification and asked whether the directive on equal treatment in employment and occupation must be interpreted as prohibiting direct discrimination on grounds of disability and harrassment related to disability only in respect of an employee who is himself disabled, or whether the directive applies equally to an employee who is treated less favourably by reason of the disability of his child, to whom he is primary carer.
The ECJ has said that the prohibition of discrimiation laid down by the directive on equal treatment in employment and occupation is not limited to disabled people alone. This essentially means that the treatment that Ms Coleman received was contrary to the prohibition of direct discrimination laid down by the directive and therefore unlawful.
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