Mosque’s ban on female fun-runners breached law, says barrister—The Times
Associate Lui Asquith has been quoted in an article from The Times reporting on East London Mosque’s decision to ban female fun-runners from a Muslim Charity Run.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission is assessing a complaint made that the event’s entry rules breached equality legislation.
Lui is cited as saying “if this were a single race including boys, girls and men all running together, it’s hard to see how the charity could use the single-sex exemption under the Equality Act.”
Their full quote is below:
Whether a discriminatory policy is lawful always depends on the specific facts and how the Equality Act 2010 applies to that set of facts. Equality laws allow charities to run separate and single sex events in certain circumstances... If this was a single race including boys, girls, and men all running together, it’s hard to see how the charity could use the single-sex exemption under the Equality Act. That’s because the law protects people based on their sex from birth - there’s no minimum age for that protection. So the race would be considered mixed-sex... It may be possible to justify a men only race for adults and no women’s race, if there was insufficient demand for the latter.
The full article is available to view on The Times by subscription only.
The story has also been covered in The Evening Standard.
About Lui
Lui Asquith is an associate in the regulation and public law team. They advise both claimants and defendants on all aspects of public law and regulatory matters, with a focus on judicial review. They have a particular interest in public interest litigation and act in a variety of sensitive and complex cases, with particular interest and specialism in human rights law, government policy related challenge and discrimination claims.
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