Miss Patrycja Wierowska v HC-One Oval Limited — 2022

This was a preliminary issue hearing about whether Miss Wierowska’s objections to Covid vaccination were protected as religion for the purpose of section 10 Equality Act 2010. She had worked as a care worker until her dismissal on 28 April 2021 and said that she refused vaccination on Roman Catholic grounds, including concerns about foetal material, interference with DNA, and the experimental nature of the vaccines.

The respondent argued that her position was better characterised as a philosophical or evidential objection, relying on Grainger plc and ors v Nicholson and McClintock v Department of Constitutional Affairs. The claimant relied on Eweida v United Kingdom and submitted that her beliefs were a manifestation of her religion and did not need to reflect the orthodox position of the Catholic Church.

Employment Judge Fowell held that section 10 distinguishes religion from philosophical belief and that Grainger was not the relevant framework because the claimant was relying on religious faith. The tribunal accepted that the issue was one of the degree of connection between her faith and her refusal to vaccinate, and found that the matter fell within the Eweida line rather than McClintock because her objections were rooted in longstanding Catholic views about abortion, the sanctity of human life, and the use of foetal material in medical treatment.

The judge rejected the submission that her position was merely health-based or based on general scepticism about government guidance. He found that her evidence showed a firm and rooted aversion to vaccines developed using foetal stem cells, and that there was a sufficiently close and direct nexus between that refusal and her underlying religious beliefs. The judgment therefore held that she was entitled to rely on her religious faith as a protected characteristic. No substantive merits decision or remedy was determined in this judgment.