Homer v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police [2012] UKSC 15 is a UK labour law case, concerning discrimination under what is now the Equality Act 2010.
Mr Homer claimed indirect age discrimination, because after a rule change he was required to have a law degree to get onto the third and highest pay grade, once he was 62 years old.
He brought a claim under the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006, SI 2006/1031 after internal grievances and appeals were dismissed.
The Supreme Court [3] allowed his appeal and determined that the case must be remitted back to the Employment Tribunal for further consideration.
[...] The law of indirect discrimination is an attempt to level the playing field by subjecting to scrutiny requirements which look neutral on their face but in reality work to the comparative disadvantage of people with a particular protected characteristic.
Put simply, the reason for the disadvantage was that people in this age group did not have time to acquire a law degree.
It is not limited to the social policy or other objectives derived from article 6(1), 4(1) and 2(5) of the Directive, but can encompass a real need on the part of the employer's business: Bilka-Kaufhaus GmbH v Weber von Hartz, Case 170/84, [1987] ICR 110.
He went on, at [165], to commend the three-stage test for determining proportionality derived from de Freitas v Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Lands and Housing [1999] 1 AC 69, 80: "First, is the objective sufficiently important to justify limiting a fundamental right?
"As the Court of Appeal held in Hardy & Hansons plc v Lax [2005] EWCA Civ 846, [2005] ICR 1565 [31, 32], it is not enough that a reasonable employer might think the criterion justified.
The ET found that the aim of requiring a law degree was to facilitate the recruitment and retention of staff of appropriate calibre within the PNLD.
It was clearly important to the developing organisation to retain the skills and expertise of its existing highly valued staff, including Mr Homer.
Although the regulation refers only to a "proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim", this has to be read in the light of the Directive which it implements.
Some measures may simply be inappropriate to the aim in question: thus, for example, the aim of rewarding experience is not achieved by age related pay scales which apply irrespective of experience (Hennigs v Eisenbahn-Bundesamt; Land Berlin v Mai, Joined Cases C-297/10 and C-298/10 [2012] 1 CMLR 18); the aim of making it easier to recruit young people is not achieved by a measure which applies long after the employees have ceased to be young (Kücükdeveci v Swedex GmbH & Co KG, Case C-555/07, [2011] 2 CMLR 33).
Mr Lewis points out that this is incorrect: both the Directive and the Regulations require that the criterion itself be justified rather than that its discriminatory effect be justified (there may well be a difference here between justification under the anti-discrimination law derived from the European Union and the justification of discrimination in the enjoyment of convention rights under the European Convention of Human Rights).
On the other hand, what is in issue here is not preserving existing benefits but affording entry to a newly created higher grade.
Lord Mance also gave a short concurring judgment, although pointing out that to allow Mr Homer to go to the third pay grade without a law degree could be discriminatory against young people.
In Games v University of Kent [2014] UKEAT 0524/13/1407, the tribunal examined Homer and the argument that the candidate was not discriminated against due to an education requirement.