UK: no protection for belief in moral obligation to break the law

Over recent years there has been a steady flow of tribunal cases testing the boundaries of the protection for beliefs under the Equality Act.  Case law has established a clear test: to be protected a belief must be (i) genuinely held, (ii) not merely an opinion or viewpoint based on the present state of information, (iii) as to a weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour, (iv) attain a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance, and (v) worthy of respect in a democratic society, not incompatible with human dignity and not conflict with the fundamental rights of others.  How these tests should be applied to an individual's specific beliefs is sometimes less obvious, but can be critical for employers given the lack of a cap on compensation, and of any service requirement, for discrimination claims.

One area of developing case law has concerned vegetarianism / veganism. The claimant's ethical veganism in Casamitjana Costa v League Against Cruel Sports was held to be a protected philosophical belief given the extent to which the claimant adjusted his lifestyle to reflect his beliefs (see here), whereas an individual's more limited vegetarian beliefs were not protected in Conisbee v Crossley Farms on the particular facts.  The latest tribunal case in this area, Free Miles v The Royal Veterinary College, establishes that an ethical veganist belief that there is a moral obligation to take unlawful steps to prevent or reduce the suffering of animals cannot be worthy of respect in a democratic society and so fails test (v).  The tribunal commented that laws are made by democratically elected representatives and it is not open to individuals to decide which laws are unjust and can be disobeyed; any belief that advocates or makes unlawful actions obligatory is not worthy of respect in a democratic society. Had the belief been limited to a moral obligation to take lawful action, this might have been protected.

The tribunal accepted that the more limited ethical veganist beliefs held by the claimant (that humans should not eat, wear, use for sport, experiment on or profit from animals) were protected, but her actions in trespassing on property and stealing animals were not sufficiently closely connected to those protected beliefs to be a manifestation of them. Further, even if the actions were sufficiently connected to the protected beliefs, they were an objectionable or inappropriate manifestation of those beliefs and therefore to be treated as dissociable from the beliefs (so that dismissal for this reason is not unlawful direct belief discrimination).  Equally, even if dismissal for her unlawful actions indirectly discriminated against those holding the more limited, protected beliefs, such a policy was objectively justified given the employer's need to maintain good relationships with food producers, abattoirs and animal-based research facilities in order to promote animal welfare standards.