www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/sep/11/no-europeans-need-apply-growing-evidence-discrimination-uk-brexit?CMP=share_btn_tw
Europeans need not apply: evidence mounts of discrimination in UK
Exclusive: Government investigates evidence EU nationals are blocked from jobs and from renting or buying homes
Legal cases left right and centre here. Including ones relating to government regulations.
Article 14 of the Human Rights Act
Article 14
Prohibition of discrimination
The enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set forth in this Convention shall be secured without discrimination on any ground such as sex, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth or other status.
Plenty for the government to fall foul of here.
Also think of the prospect of the repeal of the Act under Henry VIII Brexit powers.
HOWEVER the Act also stems from the ECHR.
Even if we ARE leaving the EU, we are NOT leaving the ECHR. Or so we say.
This is article 14 of the ECHR:
Article 14 – discrimination
Article 14 contains a prohibition of discrimination. This prohibition is broad in some ways and narrow in others. It is broad in that it prohibits discrimination under a potentially unlimited number of grounds. While the article specifically prohibits discrimination based on "sex, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opinions, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth or other status", the last of these allows the court to extend to Article 14 protection to other grounds not specifically mentioned such as has been done regarding discrimination based on a person's sexual orientation.
At the same time, the article's protection is limited in that it only prohibits discrimination with respect to rights under the Convention. Thus, an applicant must prove discrimination in the enjoyment of a specific right that is guaranteed elsewhere in the Convention (e.g. discrimination based on sex – Article 14 – in the enjoyment of the right to freedom of expression – Article 10). It has been said that laws regarding familial sexual relationships (or incest) are in breach of Article 14 when combined with Article 8.
Protocol 12 extends this prohibition to cover discrimination in any legal right, even when that legal right is not protected under the Convention, so long as it is provided for in national law.
Though this is interesting (and rather worrying):
Protocol 4 – civil imprisonment, free movement, expulsion
Article 1 prohibits the imprisonment of people for inability to fulfil a contract. Article 2 provides for a right to freely move within a country once lawfully there and for a right to leave any country. Article 3 prohibits the expulsion of nationals and provides for the right of an individual to enter a country of his or her nationality. Article 4 prohibits the collective expulsion of foreigners.
Turkey and the United Kingdom have signed but never ratified Protocol 4. Greece and Switzerland have neither signed nor ratified this protocol.
The United Kingdom's failure to ratify this protocol is due to concerns over the interaction of Article 2 and Article 3 with British nationality law. Specifically, several classes of "British national" (such as British National (Overseas)) do not have the right of abode in the United Kingdom and are subject to immigration control there. In 2009, the UK government stated that it had no plans to ratify Protocol 4 because of concerns that those articles could be taken as conferring that right.
Protocol 12 – discrimination
Applies the current expansive and indefinite grounds of prohibited discrimination in Article 14 to the exercise of any legal right and to the actions (including the obligations) of public authorities.
The Protocol entered into force on 1 April 2005 and has (As of July 2009) been ratified by 17 member states. Several member states—Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Lithuania, Malta, Monaco, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom—have not signed the protocol.
The United Kingdom government has declined to sign Protocol 12 on the basis that they believe the wording of protocol is too wide and would result in a flood of new cases testing the extent of the new provision. They believe that the phrase "rights set forth by law" might include international conventions to which the UK is not a party, and would result in incorporation of these instruments by stealth. It has been suggested that the protocol is therefore in a catch-22, since the UK will decline to either sign or ratify the protocol until the European Court of Human Rights has addressed the meaning of the provision, while the court is hindered in doing so by the lack of applications to the court concerning the protocol caused by the decisions of Europe's most populous states—including the UK—not to ratify the protocol. The UK government, nevertheless, "agrees in principle that the ECHR should contain a provision against discrimination that is free-standing and not parasitic on the other Convention rights".
I would look out for the EU demanding that any a50 deal MUST have a clause where membership of the ECHR is compulsory and no negotiable. I would be AMAZED at it not being there
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_Rights
An example I can think of. Article 14 in relation to Protocol 1 Article 1 which states:
Article 1 – property
Article 1 provides for the right to the peaceful enjoyment of one's possessions. The European Court of Human Rights acknowledged a violation of the fair balance between the demands of the general interest of the community and the requirements of the protection of the individual's fundamental rights, also, in the uncertainty – for the owner – about the future of the property, and in the absence of an allowance.
I think there might be issues arising here in relation to EU citizens being forced to register or having problems with a mortgage purely on the basis of their nationality.
Clever lawyer who knows this stuff I'm sure would be able to start building a few cases on this.
The legal tidal wave coming.