The BBC reports:
A council has won its appeal against a ruling it discriminated against a Christian registrar who refused to conduct same-sex civil partnerships.
Lillian Ladele said she could not carry out same-sex ceremonies “as a matter of religious conscience”.
An Employment Tribunal found in July that Islington Council, in north London, had unlawfully discriminated against her.
But an Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has now upheld the authority’s appeal…
Islington councillor John Gilbert said: “The council is extremely pleased with this decision which it believes to be the right one.”
You can read the full story here. Lynne Featherstone, the Liberal Democrats equalities spokesperson, said of the verdict:
I welcome the result as it would be just as unacceptable for a registrar to refuse to marry a couple who had had premarital sex because of their religious belief. This case is no different. There is no hierarchy between strands of equality, just the principle of mutual respect and tolerance – particularly for those in public administration. (Source: Lynne Featherstone’s blog)
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13 Comments
I think this is a tricky one.
I agree with the Court’s decision….and I applaud the ability to say no based on personal belief. The registrar’s reaction was after all a form of conscientious objection.
Perhaps in the end it comes down in future to very clear job description: ‘take this job by all means, but marrying everyone with a legal right comes with the territory.’
JW
The civil partnership is the only option for same sex couples, those with religious views forbidding same sex unions have the option to become ministers and perform marriages in their respective religious community.
Therefore if an official can’t perform weddings for everybody regardless to their sexual orientation or such because of his or her religious beliefs, he or she shouldn’t have sought his or her way to such aposition in the first place. He or she should have become a minister of his or her religious community, which agrees on the his or her views on who can or can not be married.
@John Ward:
I think I agree with you…
Conscientious objection is not quite the right parallel, as no-one made this person take a job as a registrar.
Good. If this idiot won’t do her job, get rid of her.
All in all rather sad as the legal clash of liberties usually is. It isn’t clear whether the person took the job before civil partnerships were introduced. If so, it could be that it is an enforced change to the individual’s terms of employment, which could be interpreted as leading them to be made redundant.
I must say I don’t see the logic in Lynne’s comment. If strands of equality (whatever the phrase may actually be meant to mean) are all equal, and I’m not at all sure they are or even should be, the same should surely be applied to mutual respect and tolerance, but apparently tolerance doesn’t apply to the government.
Also, I don’t agree with asquith’s description of her as an idiot – perhaps a slight lack of mutual respect and tolerance there?
Whereas Asquith was sometime wrong in the 1920s, he’s abolutely right here!!
She’s a bigot, which makes her an idiot by definition. The fact that she’s a sincere bigot doesn’t change that.
Good result from a somewhat bizarre ruling from the Employment tribunal. She was a civil registrar who refused to do her job – ergo she should be sacked.
Religion and government should be separated. If one can’t separate his or her religious views from his or her duty as a government officer, he or she shouldn’t be a government officer.
She was a civil registrar who refused to do her job – ergo she should be sacked.
But the case turns on precisely whether it was part of her job description to marry anyone who requested it (within statute). There is often an opt-out clause for reasons of conscience: for instance, doctors are not obliged to prescribe abortion or abortifacients.
Assuming she held her job when the statute came into force, there are three possibilities here. Firstly, perhaps no general obligation to marry exists in law, in which case she shouldn’t have been sacked.
Secondly, perhaps a general obligation exists with an opt-out. She shouldn’t have been sacked because she was entitled to behave as she did.
Thirdly, perhaps a general obligation exists with no opt-out. This would appear to be the situation as the tribunal found it, and it is therefore the case that she was constructively dismissed by statute. One might argue that an individual in such a position is due compensation.
Whichever way you slice it, this is a pretty nasty business, and tends to make our public servants hostages to fortune. Are they beholden to whatever damn fool idea the government of the day dreams up?
“Whichever way you slice it, this is a pretty nasty business, and tends to make our public servants hostages to fortune. Are they beholden to whatever damn fool idea the government of the day dreams up?”
Err, yes …
“Err, yes …”
Careful where you point that thing. It gets fraud investigations stopped and subjects leaky civil servants to criminal (not industrial) proceedings.
(And I agree that public servants have a general duty to put government policy into practice. But it isn’t as clear-cut as “Err, yes …” makes out.)
As regards this particular case, Lillian Ladele has not been sacked or compelled to perform civil partnership ceremonies.
If the judgment stands (and I think an appeal, let alone a successful one, quite unlikely) she may be disciplined, and possibly sacked if she continues to refuse to conduct civil partnership ceremonies or even (as some with religious objections have agreed to do) to process the paperwork where the ceremony is not required.
There is a good precis of the legal points at UsefullyEmployed.