Allison Bailey Appeal

[BordoisAgain]

She has just tweeted that she is appealing the decision to dismiss her claim against Stonewall in her recent case.

No news on if a garden is needed to be seeded though!

I'm sure that "inducement to discriminate" is common. Bearing in mind that an individual can be personally liable for discrimination. So if you are interviewing candidates for a job and your boss tells you to mark down any black applicants / female applicants, that is unlawful inducement to discriminate, whether you obey the instruction or not.

"We will give you advice on certain PCs, but you don't have to take it." Fair enough.

"We will give you advice on certain PCs, and you don't have to take it, but if you do we'll promote your company by saying how good a place it is for people with those PCs to work in." Sounds fair, until...

"We will give you incorrect advice on certain PCs, and you don't have to take it, because it's up to you to check that self-professed experts are presenting the law accurately, but if you do we'll promote your company by saying how good a place it is for people with those PCs to work in-- despite the fact that our advice not only disadvantage people with other PCs, but also disadvantages most of the people with the PCs we are pretending to support--."

Not so fair and reasonable, is it?

There were so many threads in the original case that it was very hard to determine which actions contributed to what detriment. The appeal should be much more straightforward. Even if it's not successful, it will be great to see Stonewall out in the open having to justify their beliefs and actions. I'm sure they won't be too keen to have Kirrin Medcalf (complete with entourage) representing them on the stand again.

I know Allison got some damages from GCC but what happened about costs? Since she succeeded in part, did they have to cover any of her side?

Apparently it’s very rare for them to award costs in employment tribunals.

My recollection was that Stonewall agreed that their advice went 'beyond the law' so maybe that is what is being contested. Stonewall might have to change their advice.

What a brave and wonderful woman she is - to face all that again.

I also thought it was masterful timing. I've done it myself in the past with personal legal admin and it's very satisfying.

I was surprised SW got away with it tbh at the first ET. I think AB has a winnable case here.

I wonder if there is some evidence from an FOI either at GCC or another Organisation.

I hope she hasn't been goaded into this decision by twitter trolls selectively reading the previous judgment.

The new (dull and unoriginal) refrain on Twitter from the expected quarters is a faux-innocent "why is she appealing when she won her case against Stonewall?"

Remember that Allison Bailey can request an appeal, and the EAT will carry out an initial review to decide whether in their view the appeal can proceed, but they might decide against permitting this.

Such good news that GCC are not appealing.

I do hope they give the EAT the go ahead.

Yeah, Allison's case against them was a lot stronger than Stonewall. Also the major downsides for GCC last time were costs and dirty laundry being aired in public, both of which are inevitably worsened even further with an appeal even if they won. The sum they had to pay Allison wasn't massive, so it wouldn't justify the definite costs of further challenge.

also think it’s good to have things settled in court of appeal due to its ability to set precedent.

I think this is the reason for it. Even if she wins nothing new, the key elements of her victories so far (which protect GC views from employment discrimination) will be secured as legal precedent.

It's not enough to just have the MF case. Building up a body of case law will go a long way towards stopping what Stonewall and other have been doing.

The added scrutiny of SW's behaviour is just gravy.

I know it's hard digging again but I'll be putting in because I think this is the step that really matters.

Seems like it would be hard to prove they had a direct impact even though we all know they did.

Even if they had a direct impact, I'm not sure that makes them liable (at least from an employment perspective).

However their defence "if employers are stupid enough to harass employees we ask them to then it's not our responsibility" might make it very easy to get an appeal court judgement holding employers responsible if they discriminate against those with GC views.

And that is what we really want because the ET wasn't binding.

In effect Stonewall's own defence to the ET would contribute to it being unlawful for them to solicit employer action like they have.

IANAL, this is all speculation from reading around the tribunal.

I wondered this too. But it might be more that she has limited resources (mental energy as much as money) and needed to be sure GCC weren’t appealing before feeling able to commit to appealing the SW ruling.

How does an appeal work? Is it possible to introduce new evidence and witnesses or is it only possible to re-examine what was put before the original hearing?

Of course, the vital question here is: how many support beings will be summoned by SWers in the course of this appeal?

I don't know if this is helpful or not. I just googled.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/employment-appeal-tribunal-rules

Interesting

www.xperthr.co.uk/editors-choice/parties-challenging-tribunal-decision-with-new-evidence-should-seek-review-not-appeal/103155/

Excellent summary!

I hope you don’t mind, but I am going to steal that when I need to explain this to people who aren’t quite there yet.

Please do But if you can get the formatting right, it would be an improvement!

I wonder if this might have had a different outcome if GCC wasn’t a legal group. As in did the judgement consider that GCC should have understood the legal situation better.

If Allison had faced the same situation with a non legal employer would SW have been seen to be more responsible as they were presenting themselves as experts to people who couldn’t reasonably be expected to understand the legal position better than the self proclaimed experts?

Apologies if this is the wrong thread, but I've just spotted on Twitter that Alison Bailey v Stonewall is going to a full EAT hearing.
#HappyPrideMonth