Strasbourg closes long-running religious discrimination chapter

Strasbourg's Grand Chamber refuses to hear appeal against decision that Christian registrar was discriminated against on religious grounds

The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Justice has refused to hear an appeal by Lillian Ladele and two other Christian claimants who said they had been unfairly discriminated on grounds of religion.

The decision brings to a close the long-running dispute between Ladele and Islington Council, which the Christian registrar started after resigning from her job when the local authority refused to exempt her from performing civil partnership ceremonies.

The ruling by the Strasbourg court that Ms Ladele was not discriminated against now stands, as are the court's findings in the case of Relate counsellor Gary McFarlane, who was sacked in March 2008 for refusing to provide sex therapy to gay couples.

NHS nurse Shirley Chaplin, the third appellant, had been moved to a non-nursing job after she objected to requests by her manager, on health and safety grounds, to remove a cross she had been wearing around her neck.

BA employee Nadia Eweida, a claimant in the earlier proceedings, who argued the airline's ban on the wearing of religious items was discriminatory, did not appeal against the court's original ruling on 15 January 2013.

The Strasbourg judges agreed with the employment tribunal's decision in Ms Eweida's case that although BA's objective to "project a certain corporate image" was "undoubtedly legitimate", its outright ban did not strike a fair balance between the various interests at stake.

A spokesman for the Christian Institute, which financially backed the Ladele case, said the Grand Chamber's decision "confirms our fears that people with Christian beliefs about marriage will be penalised in the workplace".

In a statement, the institute said Ms Ladele's request for reasonable accommodation would not have had any impact on the provision of civil partnerships in Islington because there were enough registrars to meet the demand.

Meanwhile, secular campaigners welcomed the outcome, with National Secular Society executive director Keith Porteous Wood saying that the Strasbourg judges had "wisely followed numerous lower courts and rejected the applicants' attempts for religious conscience to trump equality law."

He added: "We hope that this will now draw a line under the attempts by a small coterie of Christian activists to obtain special privileges for themselves which would invariably come at the expense of other people's rights. The principle of equality for all, including for religious believers, is now established and they should stop wasting the time of the courts with these vexatious cases."

The British Humanist Association commented in similar terms. Head of public affairs Pavan Dhaliwal said these cases had gone on too long "because of a determined lobby seeking to whip up a narrative of 'Christian persecution'".

"This narrative is detached from the reality of simply trying to guarantee fair treatment for all, regardless of sexual orientation, and reasonable standards of health and safety", he said, before adding: "Of course religious beliefs should be accommodated by our laws and society, but not when those beliefs impinge upon the rights and freedoms of others, and that is what these cases sought to do