Court of Appeal upholds race discrimination claim against Council

In Leicester City Council v Parmar [2025] EWCA Civ 952, the Court of Appeal upheld the decisions of both the employment tribunal (ET) and the EAT that the claimant had been directly discriminated against on grounds of race. The claimant, a British national of Indian origin employed by Leicester City Council for over 30 years, alleged that her manager had shown a pattern of discriminatory behaviour toward BAME staff, including initiating disciplinary investigations against her that were not applied to white colleagues in similar situations. The claimant’s allegations included that she was transferred from her role, subjected to a disciplinary investigation, and required to attend disciplinary meetings without substantial evidence of misconduct. The ET found that the Council failed to substantiate allegations against the claimant and that no credible non-discriminatory reasons were given for her treatment, noting a pattern of disciplinary action disproportionately targeting Asian employees. The EAT upheld the ET ruling, rejecting 11 grounds of appeal submitted by the Council, including claims of lack of reasoning and procedural missteps. The Council appealed to the Court of Appeal, challenging, inter alia, the ET’s comparator analysis, adverse inferences drawn from disclosure failures, and rejection of non-discriminatory explanations. Dismissing the appeal, the Court of Appeal (Lady Justice Laing giving the principal judgment of the court):

• found that the ET had correctly applied the burden of proof under section 136 of the Equality Act 2010 and the guidance in Igen v Wong [2005] IRLR 258

• noted that the ET’s reliance on evidential comparators was valid—the circumstances of the evidential comparators were sufficiently similar to those of the claimant to mean that their different treatment by the Council supported an inference of discrimination

• concluded that the ET was entitled to infer discrimination from the pattern of treatment and lack of credible explanation from the Council

• affirmed that the Council’s failures to disclose ‘highly relevant evidence’ was properly considered in the overall analysis, and it was reasonable for the ET to draw adverse inferences from the failures of disclosure. The ET did not treat them as ‘automatically’ shifting the burden of proof

• rejected claims regarding a lack of reasoning or procedural missteps in the ET’s judgment, holding that its findings and conclusions were sufficiently detailed and based on the evidence

• as a postscript, raised the issue of two passages of the ET’s judgment which were potentially problematic, if read in isolation, but pointed out (at paras [99]–[105]) that the passages needed to be read in context and warned against relying on ‘the “pernickety” approach to reading ET judgments’.

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