On Friday, the Court of Appeal handed down judgment in Eweida v British Airways, or the 'British Airways cross case' as it has become known. The Court found in favour of British Airways that it had not indirectly discriminated on the grounds of religion or belief.

The Court had to decide whether a policy by British Airways that employees could not wear visible jewellery (unless it was a mandatory religious item that could not be concealed and had been permitted by management) constituted indirect discrimination. The Claimant was a Christian employee who claimed that as the policy prohibited her from wearing a small visible cross, she was discriminated against on the grounds of her religion or belief. The Court found that as the Claimant alone was disadvantaged by the policy, it did not amount to indirect discrimination. For a policy to amount to indirect discrimination, there had to be some evidence of an identifiable group within a workforce being placed at a disadvantage. In this case, the Claimant was unable to adduce evidence of either a real or hypothetical group and her claim therefore failed.

The Court was not required to consider whether the policy was justified, but indicated that if the point had been considered it would have found the dress policy a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. This was on the basis that the claim by Ms Eweida was an entirely personal objection. The Court concluded that in these circumstances, sometimes the only fair solution for enforcement may be a blanket ban.

This robust judgment gives some comfort to employers that discrimination laws do not necessarily require them to make allowances for each individual's personal preference when introducing a workforce-wide policy. However, it does not amount to a licence to disregard the effects of a policy on a solitary individual. It may be relatively simple to aggregate a single employee with a real or hypothetical group of other employees to gauge adverse impact. When formulating and drafting policies employers should therefore still be mindful of the possible effects on an increasingly diverse workforce.

This article was written for Law-Now, CMS Cameron McKenna's free online information service. To register for Law-Now, please go to www.law-now.com/law-now/mondaq

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The original publication date for this article was 15/02/2010.