ABSTRACT
The seminal case for today’s indirect discrimination law, Griggs v Duke Power, announced that discrimination law was to address the ‘built in headwinds’ against minorities and women in employment. The formula consists of the following elements: an apparently neutral provision, criterion or practice (PCP), which puts, or would put, the claimant and the claimant’s group at a ‘particular disadvantage’, and cannot be justified. The indissociable argument alludes to established jurisprudence that where an apparently neutral term is indissociable from a protected characteristic the term will be treated as directly discriminatory. The case was argued (loosely) around the following three elements: The protected characteristic was ‘non-British’; the PCP was ‘mistreatment of migrant workers’; and the particular disadvantage was the mistreatment. For direct discrimination, both the EAT and Supreme Court sidestepped the argument that DWV status was indissociable from being a migrant worker.
