The Supreme Court has recently handed down two important judgements concerning age discrimination. The first handed down on the 24th April 2012, concerns indirect age discrimination and the second handed down on the 25th April 2012, concerns direct age discrimination . In this post I will deal very briefly with these two cases and in a later post, I will deal with the issues more fully.
In Homer v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire the court had to consider whether the requirement that a person had to have a law degree to be promoted to a certain post indirectly discriminated against someone on the basis of their age. The court in overturning the Court of Appeal's finding, held that it did indirectly discriminate. The case has been sent back to the Employment Tribunal to consider whether such discrimination was justified. The case gives greater clarity on how indirect discrimination on the basis of age is to be determined.
In Seldon v Clarkson Wright and Jakes the court had to consider whether a contractually contained retirement age, which did directly discriminate on the basis of age, was justifiable. The claimant employee (S) had been a partner in the law firm CWJ. As part of the partnership agreement, S had to retire when he was 65 and indeed when he reached 65 he was forcefully retired. The court in considering the issue of justification said that the test was stricter in direct discrimination than for indicated discrimination in that the legitimacy of the aim was to be judged from a public interest point of view and not merely from the employers point of view. That is to say that the discriminatory policy may only be justified by reasons or aims that would promote the public interest as opposed to the interests of the particular employer. CWJ offered three aims for its policy. Firstly to ensure senior solicitors had a chance at partnership, secondly facilitating workplace succession planning and thirdly to avoid having to performance manage senior partners. The court, upholding the EAT finding, rejected the last aim as being legitimate and confirmed the order to remit the case back to the ET to consider the issue of justification in respect of the first two aims.
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