Intersectional Claims at the Employment Tribunal

This chapter focuses on Employment Tribunal claims where other types of discrimination, such as sex, race, age or sexual orientation discrimination, are claimed in conjunction with a disability discrimination claim. This combination is known as intersectional discrimination, but at the time of the study in Britain, a claim for intersectional discrimination could not be brought to the Employment Tribunal. A black disabled woman, for example, would have needed to bring three separate claims for race discrimination, disability discrimination and sex discrimination. To understand the effects of membership of multiple identity groups, we draw on the intersectionality literature to inform our research. We analysed 762 cases for disability discrimination that were brought in England and Wales that went to preliminary hearing or beyond and were completed in the time frame studied. Of the disability cases analysed, almost a fifth included one or more additional claims for other types of discrimination. We found that including multiple types of discrimination increased the chance of failure at the preliminary hearing, but not at a full hearing. Furthermore, a disability discrimination case was more likely to include other types of discrimination claims, notably race discrimination, when the claimant had a mental health impairment.