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Coleman v Attridge Law

The European Equal Treatment Directive (ETD) states that workers have a right not to be discriminated against because of their disability (among other things). In Coleman v Attridge Law, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) said that the directive also covers people associated with a disabled person, even if they are not themselves disabled.

Basic facts

Mrs Coleman, a legal secretary, gave birth in 2002 to a disabled son who required specialist care. She claimed that when she came back from maternity leave, her employer refused to allow her to return to her existing job and denied her the same flexibility in terms of her working hours as parents of non-disabled children.

She also alleged that she was called “lazy” when she asked for time off to care for her son, and that her employer made other abusive and insulting comments about her and her child. She was threatened with dismissal for occasionally arriving late at the office.

Mrs Coleman took voluntary redundancy in early March 2005 but lodged an employment tribunal claim in late August for unfair constructive dismissal and for disability discrimination under the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act (DDA). Her employer said that she could not make a claim under the DDA because it only covered disabled people and she herself was not disabled.

Equal Treatment Directive

Article 1 states that:
“The purpose of this Directive is to lay down a general framework for combating discrimination on the grounds of ... disability ... as regards employment and occupation, with a view to putting into effect in the member states the principle of equal treatment.”

Article 2 states that:
“(1) For the purposes of this Directive, the ‘principle of equal treatment’ shall mean that there shall be no direct or indirect discrimination whatsoever on any of the grounds referred to in article 1.

“(2) For the purposes of paragraph (1): (a) direct discrimination shall be taken to occur where one person is treated less favourably than another is, has been or would be treated in a comparable situation...

“(3) Harassment shall be deemed to be a form of discrimination within the meaning of paragraph (1), when unwanted conduct related to any of the grounds referred to in article 1 takes place with the purpose or effect of violating the dignity of a person and of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment...”

ECJ decision

The ECJ ruled that there was nothing in the Equal Treatment Directive to suggest that it was limited to only protecting people who themselves had a disability. The ECJ stated that the whole point of the legislation was to combat all discrimination on the ground of disability. The principle of equal treatment in the directive therefore applied not to a particular category of person but to the grounds set out in article 1.

It was therefore direct discrimination under article 2(2)(a) for an employer to treat an employee who was not disabled (but who was the primary carer for a disabled child) less favourably than an appropriate comparator. Likewise, the directive prohibited an employer under articles 1 and 2(3), from harassing an employee if the harassment related to the disability of their child, for whom they were the primary carer.

The ECJ accepted that the directive included provisions such as the right to reasonable accommodation, which was worded so as to apply to disabled people only. That, though, did not mean that the principle of equal treatment as a whole had to be interpreted to relate only to disabled people.