Ms Woods, a Muslim, was a pre-registration student at a pharmacy where both the pharmacist and managing director were Sikhs.
She was alleged to have made a comment that the pharmacy was effectively 'a little Sikh club that only looked after Sikhs', but denied saying this. She was then dismissed, supposedly for poor timekeeping and not following the company's absence reporting procedure. Her claims of discrimination and harassment failed, but she won on victimisation.
The employment tribunal made a number of findings, ultimately concluding that Ms Woods had been dismissed for making the 'little Sikh club' comment. The comment, it said, amounted to an allegation of direct discrimination and so was a protected act. (Discrimination legislation is clear that people must not be penalised for protected acts.)
But the employer won on appeal. The Employment Appeal Tribunal said that as the tribunal had found that Ms Woods had been dismissed for making the racist comment, the tribunal could not then conclude that the dismissal was because of the protected act of alleging discrimination. These were two separate things.
A reminder that for a claim to succeed, the less favourable treatment must have been because of the protected act and not another reason.
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