In person For the v Respondent — 2025

At a public preliminary hearing on 29 and 30 July 2025, Employment Judge Brown allowed the claimant to amend the ET1 only to add paragraphs 5 and 6 of the 23 January 2025 version, which said that his philosophical belief was that there was no real requirement to wear ASOS uniform and that he was protected by his employment contract and employee handbook. The judge refused the remainder of the proposed amendment because it added material with no clear purpose or effect.

The claimant did not comply with the earlier unless orders requiring particulars of his alleged protected disclosures and the alleged particular disadvantage. Applying r39 of the Employment Tribunals Rules of Procedure 2024, the material-compliance approach in Minnoch and Johnson, and the interests-of-justice approach in St Albans Girls' School v Neary, the tribunal declined relief from sanction. The automatic unfair dismissal claim based on protected disclosures and the indirect discrimination complaints therefore remained struck out. The tribunal also recorded that the claimant gave changing accounts of the alleged disclosures during the hearing and never identified the information said to have been disclosed.

The tribunal struck out the religion or belief direct discrimination and harassment complaints because the asserted belief was an opinion about the requirement to wear ASOS uniform, not a protected philosophical belief within s.10 Equality Act 2010 and Grainger. It also struck out the race discrimination and ordinary unfair dismissal claims against ASOS: there was no factual basis for ASOS to be responsible for the dismissal decision or for the comparator treatment relied on, ASOS was not the claimant's employer for the unfair dismissal claim, and the claims were in any event out of time.

The claimant was dismissed on 19 March 2024, the primary limitation period expired on 18 June 2024, ACAS conciliation against ASOS did not begin until 9 November 2024, and the claim was accepted on 13 November 2024. The tribunal refused to extend time. The ordinary unfair dismissal and direct race discrimination claims against Ricoh were left to proceed to final hearing, and no monetary award was made at this stage.