Judgments
EAT delivers important judgment on the legal implications of 'outing' a gay employee in the workplace
15/04/10
In Land Registry v Grant (UIKEAT/0232/09/DA), the EAT was called upon to consider the question of whether a tribunal had erred when it concluded that an employee of the Land Registry, who was homosexual, had been discriminated against and harassed under the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003 when his manager alluded to the fact of his sexual orientation in the work-place. The EAT concluded that the tribunal had erred in its conclusions, not least because it had failed to take into account in its judgment the significant fact that the employee had himself come out to a sizeable part of the Land Registry's work-force when when he worked in another office. The EAT decided that the case should be remitted to a freshly constituted tribunal for reconsideration. This is the first judgment by the EAT in which the question of how allegations of outing gay employees in the work-place are to be analysed under the 2003 Regulations has been considered. It embodies some important lessons for both employers and employees on this important but difficult subject.
