EQUAL STATUS 2001 - A DISCRIMINATE ACT?
A Newsmedianews insight report
July 14, 2002“People get stopped at club entrances by bar staff for no good reason; people get refused service the same. Most don’t do anything about it.”
“The legislation is, effectively, back to front in that it requires the aggrieved to prove discrimination on narrowly defined grounds whilst faling to enact in law adequate regulations to prevent such discrimination taking place to begin.”
Taken from related itemEqual status legislation exists to quell and to remove enforced inequality within society and to provide a bandwidth of respected equal rights.
Ireland’s Equal Status Act focuses on outlawing the discriminate provision of services and/or goods to the public. Such an aspiration is necessary within any healthy society.
Yet staff working for the equality office admit that they have become aware of shortfalls in the grounds for complaint embodied by the Act and have forwarded their own, and external, recommendations to the responsible government Minister.
The Minister has responded that he has no plans to change the existing legislation for “some time”.
Existing legislation falls short by not including adequate grounds on which to register complaints of random or arbitrary discrimination. The lack of such grounds provides a loophole through which persons may continue discriminatory service unchallenged by the provisions of the Act.
By failing to provide grounds to cover indiscriminate discrimination, the Act itself also discriminates against persons who are subject to such random or arbitrary discrimination — discrimination that is every bit as real as that covered by the nine defined ‘grounds’ within the current legislation.
Arbitrary discrimination occurs regularly at public houses with refusal of service. Often of late this occurs simply because the customer might be unknown at the premises. It also occurs when staffs act on personal prejudices. In either case, refusal of service is without valid reason and an infringement upon the customer’s civil liberties. It also, quite clearly, discriminates against those so refused. However, at present, many who knowingly continue to practise discriminate treatment do so whilst at the same time cocking a snoot at the law and at those responsible for compiling and upholding the law.
The forms for filing a complaint contain the below listed definitions for grounds for complaint. A study of the nine grounds reveals their inadequacy at providing redress for the all too common cases of random or arbitrary discrimination—or discrimination for no apparent reason.
Grounds under which discrimination is claimed
- gender (male or female)
- marital status (single, married, separated, divorced or widowed)
- family status (parent/pregnant/person in loco parentis of children or parent /resident primary carer of person needing care)
- Sexual orientation (heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual orientation)
- religion (religious belief / background or lack of belief)
- age (18 years of age and over, see note attached)
- disability (see explanatory notes attached)
- race (colour, nationality, ethnic or national origins)
- membership of the Traveller community
Description of Claim
- discriminatory treatment
- harassment (other than sexual harassment)
- sexual harassment
- victimisation
- discriminatory advertising
Where an individual is discriminated against by the refusal of the provision of a service or of goods for reasons that might not be included within the above existing grounds, and where such goods or services might be provided to another person free of such discrimination, then the person discriminated against is hamstrung in gaining redress to such discriminate acts.
The present structure of the Act is too rigid and is inadequate in that it impedes the pursuit and elimination of prevalent discrimination as referred to in this article. If the Government is serious about preventing discrimination and promoting equal status, then the responsible Minister must rapidly correct existing omissions in the legislation.
Legislation that is designed to protect an individual’s civil liberty—for that is what the Equal Status Act is really all about—means the matters dealt with are of the most serious consequence. Accordingly, any legislation enacted with regards to such matters must be correct to begin. Where it is not, and where shortfalls are clearly identified, then it is fully encumbent upon government to rectify the omissions if the legislation and consequently the government is to command proper respect.
The current legislation of the Act would not in its present form stand a Constitutional challenge.
Related items:
Equal rights? A declaration of war?
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