Britain's Equality and Human Rights Commission Issues New Report

Britain's Equality and Human Rights Commission yesterday issued its Human Rights Review, a study of how well public authorities protect and promote human rights in England and Wales. One chapter of the study is devoted to Art. 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights that protects freedom of thought, conscience and religion. The chapter concludes that "Courts are setting too high a threshold for establishing 'interference' with the right to manifest a religion or belief."  The report also criticizes "indirect discrimination" precedents in which British courts focus on group, rather than individual, disadvantage growing out of challenged practices. Christian Today reports that the Evangelical Alliance protested another passage in the Commission's report: "The Commission believes that an employer may legitimately refuse to accommodate an individual’s religious beliefs where such accommodation would involve discrimination on the basis of other protected characteristics."