Scottish Human Rights Law Group

A church body or an association with religious and philosophical objects is capable of possessing and exercising the rights contained in Article 9 ECHR, but in Glasgow City Council v McNab   the Employment Appeal Tribunal refused to allow the Catholic Church to intervene in a dispute concerning a claim by an individual to have suffered unlawful discrimination on grounds of religion and belief.     The individual in question was a teacher who while an avowed atheist worked at a Roman Catholic school maintained by the local authority.   He applied for a pastoral care post in the school but had not been invited to interview.   Before the tribunal, the local authority accepted that it had discriminated against the applicant within the terms of regulations 3 and 6 of the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003 but argued that they were entitled and justified in so doing as the situation fell within the GOR exceptions under regulation 7(2)  and/or regulation 7(3) on the basis that being a Roman Catholic was a genuine occupational requirement of the post.   This argument was rejected both by the Employment Tribunal at first instance and on appeal to the Employment Appeal Tribunal.  The EAT held that Section 21(2A) of the Education (Scotland) Act 1980 allowed the Roman Catholic Church to approve the appointment of a non-Catholic teacher provided that it was satisfied, under s. 21(2A), as to his or her religious belief and character. That provision did not require the belief in question to be Roman Catholic or, indeed, of any denomination..     Thus it could not be said that being a Roman Catholic was necessarily a genuine occupational requirement under either regulation 7(2) or 7(3) for a pastoral post in a local authority Roman Catholic school. In any event as there was no statutory requirement for a local authority to provide denominational schools but instead only a requirement to facilitate denominational schooling that fell within its care it could not be said that an education authority could be said to have a religious ethos and therefore the local authority was not entitled to have recourse to the regulation 7(3) defence.

Aidan O’Neill

Link to Bailii Case Report