ABSTRACT
Examiners tend to set essays in this area which focus not only on the provisions of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, the Race Relations Act 1976 and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, but also on the relevant European Union (EU) provisions. A highly significant new piece of legislation is the Equality Act 2006 which makes extensive amendments to the existing anti-discrimination statutes and pushes the boundaries of equality law much further than previous legislation. This is partly a result of the need to implement EU Directives and respond to human rights decisions and partly to do with a new domestic drive towards a more holistic view of equality principles. Discrimination law can no longer be viewed as an aspect of employment law but covers a vast and ever expanding field of human activity. A parallel development has been the expansion of the protected characteristics from the original areas of race and sex to disability, gender reassignment and more recently religion, age and sexual orientation.
