ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the right to manifest discriminatory religious beliefs within employment. Employees may seek exemptions from certain parts of their work on the grounds that they conflict with their religious beliefs, or may wish to express their discriminatory views in or outside the workplace. These actions may though infringe the right of service users or colleagues to be treated in a non-discriminatory way, as well as affect the interests of employers. The chapter considers such cases, considering in particular whether registrars or those in similar jobs should be exempted from performing same-sex marriages if they have religious objections to doing so. It argues that an approach based on a proportionality test, which focuses on providing full and appropriate justification to the parties, is the best way of deciding the employment cases. Under a proportionality test, balancing principles of justification and deliberation are fulfilled primarily through the application of a fact-specific contextual analysis at the balancing stage.
