(ii) The protection from discrimination afforded on a group basis
142. The EA 2010 is also concerned to prohibit disguised discrimination which operates at a group level. This is important as Michael Foran explains (in an article entitled “Defining Sex in Law” (2025) 141 LQR 76, 91–92:
“Arguments concerning the definition of a protected characteristic are never simply manifestations of individual claims. They are always group orientated. The claim that one is a woman is a claim to be included within a particular category of persons and to be excluded from another. It is also a claim to include some persons and to exclude other persons within the group that one is a part of. This matters especially for aspects of the Equality Act 2010 which require duty-bearers to be cognisant of how their conduct might affect those who share a protected characteristic or where there is an obligation to account for the distinct needs and interests of those who share a particular characteristic.”
143. The group-based protections are aimed at achieving substantive equality of results for groups with a shared protected characteristic. The EA 2010 does this in several different ways, the most significant of which for our purposes are as follows.
144. First, the provisions concerning indirect discrimination are specifically directed at the problem of group discrimination and their purpose is to counter group (not individual) disadvantage. They operate where an apparently neutral policy or practice is applied generally to everyone but produces a disproportionate disadvantage for a particular group with a shared protected characteristic. Indirect discrimination is defined by sections 19 and/or 19A of the EA 2010. Section 19(1) and (2) provide that indirect discrimination occurs when a person (A) applies to another (B) a “provision, criterion or practice” (generally referred to as a “PCP”) if:
“(a) A applies, or would apply, it to persons with whom B does not share the characteristic,
(b) it puts, or would put, persons with whom B shares the characteristic at a particular disadvantage when compared with persons with whom B does not share it,
(c) it puts, or would put, B at that disadvantage, and
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