Mr I Mohamed v Acis Group Ltd — 2022

This was an open preliminary hearing on 13 April 2022 before Employment Judge Brewer, following an earlier closed case management hearing on 28 January 2022. The tribunal considered whether the claimant's direct race discrimination claim, said to arise from his dismissal and the rejection of his appeal, should be struck out under rule 37(1)(a). The judge set out the direct discrimination and burden of proof principles under sections 13 and 136 of the Equality Act 2010, and referred to authorities including Shamoon, Igen, Madarassy, Hewage, Anyanwu, Mechkraov, Mbiusa, Hassan and Zeb.

The judge found that the claimant had not provided facts from which a tribunal could conclude that race played any part in the dismissal or appeal outcome. The claimant had previously said at the closed hearing that he was not alleging conscious or unconscious racial prejudice by the dismissing officer or the appeal panel, but at the open hearing he shifted position and asserted that those decision-makers were motivated by race. The judge found that there was no comparator, no surrounding facts or circumstances from which adverse inferences could be drawn, and no proper basis for an inference of direct race discrimination. The tribunal also noted that the claimant's explanation for his dismissal was a matter going to the band of reasonable responses.

On that basis the tribunal struck out the race discrimination claim as having no reasonable prospect of success. The judgment records that the claimant's unfair dismissal claim remained and would proceed to a final hearing.