Equality Commission Northern Ireland

As a provider of goods, facilities and services you have a responsibility to ensure that your employees do not discriminate against individuals. An employee who discriminates on racial grounds will usually be regarded as acting in the course of their employment, even if you have issued express instructions not to discriminate. This is called “vicarious liability”.

 

However, in legal proceedings against a service provider based on the actions of an employee, it is a defence that the service provider took, ‘such steps as were reasonably practicable’ to prevent such actions. Reasonable steps would include having an equality policy, communicating it to staff and implementing it effectively. It is not a defence for the service provider simply to show that the action took place without its prior knowledge or approval.

• Access to and use of any place which members of the public are permitted to enter
• Accommodation in a hotel, boarding house or other similar establishment
• Facilities by way of banking, insurance, finance etc
• Facilities for education
• Facilities for entertainment, recreation or refreshment
• Facilities for transport or travel
• The services of any profession or trade, or any local or other public authority

It is also unlawful, on the grounds of sexual orientation, for a service provider to harass a person to whom it provides goods, facilities or services or to harass someone who seeks to obtain any of these goods or services.

It is unlawful for anyone selling or managing property or premises to discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation. For example, it would be unlawful for a landlord to refuse to rent or to evict someone on the basis of their sexual orientation.

 

For example:
 

• A landlord agrees to rent a house to Joanne and her family.  He changes his mind when he realises Joanne’s partner is female also.  The Landlord’s treatment of this family is likely to amount to direct sexual orientation discrimination.

 

It is also unlawful to apply discriminatory practices, publish discriminatory advertisements, instruct or put pressure on a person to do anything contrary to the law by discriminating in employment or other fields, or to knowingly aid another person to carry out such acts.

The only explicitly stated exception in the Regulations is where the employment is for the purposes of an organised religion. If a religious body or organisation does not wish to recruit people of a particular sexual orientation, then they will need to establish that this is necessary to comply with the doctrines of the religion.  Alternatively they will need to show that, because of the nature of the work and the context in which it is carried out, the requirement is necessary to avoid conflicting with the strongly held religious convictions of a significant number of the religion’s followers.