The God “Dilution”? Religion, Discrimination and the Case for Reasonable Accommodation

Abstract

Anti-discrimination complaints by religious employees have constructed seemingly intractable conflicts. The United Kingdom courts have resolved these disputes by diluting individual religious liberty, particularly when determining questions of disadvantage and proportionality under indirect discrimination. This article explores an alternative UK anti-discrimination claim route for religious employees, namely an employer duty of reasonable accommodation. A comparative analysis outlines the corresponding Canadian duty. This model is applied to UK employment cases featuring indirect religious discrimination, specifically those claims which formed the recent applications in Eweida and Others v UK. It is suggested that adoption of the Canadian model be considered: its nuanced approach to proportionality is particularly instructive. Whilst such a UK duty could prove controversial, it would cohere with both normative theory in law and religion and conceptual understanding of anti-discrimination law. Moreover, reasonable accommodation's individualised focus should be acclaimed; it need not compromise collective notions of religious liberty.

A practical response to ableism in leadership in UK higher education

“…It is this particular approach to theorising disability and chronic illnesses that explains why some conceptualisations and outlooks are more prominent than others. Throughout the book, many contributors have used Goffman's Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Goffman /1959 and Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity to make sense of their experiences, while others refer heavily to feminist and poststructuralist philosophy. Three contributors used poetic inquiry to theorise and make sense of their experiences of ableism in academia, which resulted in a poetic form of expression.…”

“…The decision about whether to disclose or to hide a condition is therefore an act of self-preservation, information control and impression management (Goffman /1959) -thus it is identity work. For most participants, disclosing to colleagues and immediate line managers did not equate to disclosing to the university at institutional level; and they felt more comfortable with completing the monitoring and disability review forms than with explaining themselves to colleagues:…”

“…However, in reality, coming to terms with a condition on one's personal level and subsequently managing the information about oneself in social networks are detailed processes of knowing who to tell what and ensuring that different groups of peers do not necessarily meet each other in order to be able to maintain the chosen secrecy in the workplace, for example. As this information management requires careful staging of one's identity as well as the containment of emotions, information control needs to be seen as a form of emotional labour (Goffman /1959.…”

Religious Diversity in the Public Sphere: The Canadian Case

“…The language of accommodation as a tool for diversity management has expanded beyond the borders of Canada into Belgium, Britain, France, and Europe more generally. 14 Waddington (2011), Bribosia et al (2009), Gibson (2013, Alidadi (2012), and Martínez-Torrón (2014) all advocate for some version of reasonable accommodation in Europe. It continues to circulate in Canada as the primary language for the management of religious diversity.…”

Managing workplace religious expression within the legal constraints

“…There is no such duty in the UK, although it has been argued by some that this might be beneficial (Hepple et al, 2000;Gibson, 2013). Instead, religion (alongside belief) is a 'protected characteristic' under discrimination law (Equality Act ('EA') 2010, s 10), which means that employers cannot treat people 'less favourably' than others because of their religion -this would constitute direct discrimination (EA 2010, s 13).…”