Religious discrimination and the ‘hierarchy of rights’
| Published date | 01 March 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1358229115627518 |
| Author | Megan Pearson |
| Date | 01 March 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Religious discrimination
and the ‘hierarchy of
rights’: Non-existent,
appropriate or
problematic?
Megan Pearson
Abstract
In theory, there is no hierarchy of rights in the Equality Act 2010: equal weight is given to
each protected characteristic. At least two, very different, critiques though have been
made of this argument as it relates to religion or belief. One argument is that religious
discrimination has unfairly been given a lower priority than other characteristics, par-
ticularly sexual orientation. The second is that religion is inherently different, partly
because religions tend to set extensive, and possibly discriminatory, rules for behaviour.
In order to keep religion or belief claims within a reasonable limit, religious discrimi-
nation claims must therefore be confined. The perceived danger of confining these claims
though is that, because of the insistence that there is no hierarchy of rights, this will lead
to reduced protection across all the protected characteristics since concepts which
apply across the Equality Act will be reinterpreted in order to avoid unwanted results. As
will be demonstrated though, both of these arguments are misconceived.
Keywords
Religion or belief discrimination, discrimination law, Equality Act 2010, clash of rights,
hierarchy of rights
Department of Law, University of Winchester, Winchester, Hampshire, UK
Corresponding author:
Megan Pearson, Department of Law, University of Winchester, Sparkford Rd, Winchester,
Hampshire, SO22 4NJ, UK.
Email: megan.pearson@winchester.ac.uk
International Journalof
Discrimination and theLaw
2016, Vol. 16(1) 37–50
ªThe Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1358229115627518
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