Laying out your claim
When you are claiming indirect race discrimination at Tribunal, you want to clearly argue that a company policy or practice negatively affects a group of people who fall under the protected characteristic of race. For example:
- A dress code policy that bans twist-outs and locs, hairstyles most common for Black people.
- An employer that writes to seasonal workers that they used last year, using their last known address, offering them the chance to claim a bonus within a certain time period. A lot of migrant workers miss out as they’ve gone home over the winter.
- A dress code policy that prohibits wearing a turban.
With indirect race discrimination, it’s important to know that sometimes indirect discrimination is lawful if it can be justified, for example if there are strong business reasons for the practice.
Also, with indirect race discrimination, your employer can be liable for the acts of its employees, as well as the employees being personally responsible.
Proving your claim
You don’t need to attach evidence to a Tribunal ET1 claim, but it’s a good idea to back up your claims by mentioning the evidence you intend to use. For indirect discrimination claims, people typically refer to evidence such as company policies, reports, emails, letters, meeting notes and witness evidence.
What you can ask for in your indirect race discrimination claim
If you’re successful in a Tribunal claim, you will be awarded a “remedy”. This mainly includes financial compensation, like loss of earnings. It can also include some non-financial remedies too.
Common remedies people ask for at Tribunal
Some of the key remedies you can ask for at Tribunal are:
- The money you have lost from being out of work, or working in a lower-paid job.
- The money that you expect to lose in the future from being out of work, or working in a lower-paid job.
- Wages that you are owed, including holiday pay and notice pay.
Discrimination-specific remedies
As well as the common remedies that you can ask for, discrimination-specific claims also have the option to include an “injury to feelings” remedy. This is compensation which you can be awarded when you have been hurt or distressed because you have been discriminated against.
Injury to feelings is generally awarded within one of three “Vento bands” depending on severity.
For example, Amanpreet won around £10,000 where his employer instituted a dress code that prohibited wearing a turban. A proportion of this award was made up of injury to feelings.
Real indirect race discrimination cases you can learn from
Summary: a school pupil won a settlement from a school which excluded her over the size of her hair.
Total award: £8,500
Outcome: in this case, a school pupil had been sent home from school on a number of occasions because her afro hair was not deemed to comply with the school’s uniform policy that hair must be of "a reasonable size". She argued this was indirectly discriminatory on the basis of her race.
Summary: Supreme Court allowed an appeal of an indirect discrimination case. The court argued that an assessment at work that you have to do to get promoted, which has a much lower pass rate for older people and people of colour than younger people and white people, was potentially indirectly discriminatory, even though no-one knew why the pass rate was lower.
Outcome: the case was sent back to the Tribunal for them to decide whether there had in fact been indirect race and/or indirect age discrimination.
Further reading