Discrimination
Employment Law Direct Discrimination is what its name suggests, i.e. discrimination in an employment context against a person or particular provided reason provided for by statute.
In general, there is no “justification” defence available in direct discrimination cases. Instead the law generally provides that it is not unlawful for an employer to directly discriminate against the employee or a job applicant if they can show that there was a genuine occupation requirement that a person be of a particular sex/race/religion etc. Thus, for example, it would not be unlawful to require a man and a woman respectively to play the parts of Romeo and Juliet in the Shakespeare play.
As a general rule, indirect discrimination occurs when an apparently neutral provision, criterion or practice would put persons of one sex/race/religion/disability etc at a particular disadvantage compared with persons of a different sex/race/religion/non-disabled etc. For practical purposes, although not strictly accurate in law, it can generally be said that indirect discrimination is not unlawful if the provision, criterion or practice can be objectively justified as a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
A simple example of indirect sex discrimination would be a requirement that a job applicant must be over 6ft tall. That requirement would generally put women at a disadvantage compared to men and so would be unlawful unless justified a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
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