Mr S Donnelly v Respondent — 2023

The tribunal rejected two direct sex discrimination complaints: the interview question about the claimant's experience of working with females, and the final paragraph of the respondent's e-mail of 21 February 2022. It did not decide whether the interview-question complaint would also have failed because it was presented after the statutory time limit.

It upheld the complaint that the respondent directly discriminated against the claimant by extending his probationary period because he was a man. The tribunal said that decision was not a contravention of section 39(1)(a) or section 39(2)(a) of the Equality Act 2010, but was a contravention of section 39(2)(b). It accepted that a woman-only requirement was an occupational requirement for a personal assistant in order to carry out the full responsibilities of the role, and that dignity and privacy were legitimate aims, but held that extending probation to apply that requirement to the claimant was not proportionate.

The tribunal rejected the indirect sex discrimination complaint. It also held that the claimant was wrongfully constructively dismissed and found no unauthorised deduction from wages. The judgment records that any damages for unlawful discrimination would be reduced to reflect that the claimant's feelings would still have been significantly hurt and that there was a 75% chance his employment would have ended on or about 11 March 2022 in any event. It also made an award of 2 weeks' pay under section 38 of the Employment Act 2002 because the respondent had failed to comply with section 1 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, but the extracted reasons do not state the monetary amount of that award.