by René Lavanchy
Bosses face being taken to court if they try to prevent employees looking after their disabled dependents, after a landmark ruling which led to a judge effectively writing extra clauses into Britain’s disability law.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal ruled last week that Sharon Coleman could bring a claim for disability discrimination against her employers, after her former company, Attridge Law, tried to reverse a tribunal’s decision to hear her case.
Ms Coleman left her job at the law firm after allegedly being harassed and verbally abused for asking for time off to care for her disabled son.
Her case made headlines last year when the European Court of Justice ruled that a European directive did cover discrimination “by association”, involving a third party. But because the directive’s full text was not incorporated into British law, it only applied to public sector workers. Last week’s ruling extends the right to the private sector.
EAT president Mr Justice Underhill said that to interpret the Disability Discrimination Act in line with European law, it was necessary to ‘read into’ the act extra words referring to discrimination by association.
The Government’s Equality Bill will achieve the same effect when it becomes law.
Sarah Veale, the TUC’s head of equality and employment rights, said: “There are so many carers and they’re taking up so much of the slack that cuts in the public provision [of social care] have left.
“There’s always a problem with EU directives if they’re not properly transposed… The Equality Bill covers all this so in fairness to Her Majesty’s Government, I think they’ve got this sorted.”
