PEOPLE AND CULTURE

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Ministry of Justice discriminated against dyslexic judge

2 Feb 2022

    • A dyslexic judge who requested voice recognition software and training from the Ministry of Justice to help carry out her role, but was refused, has won her claim for disability discrimination.

    Judge Zorina Nadine Clarkson Palomares, who worked on immigration and social security cases, claimed her employer had failed to make reasonable adjustments. Under the Equality Act 2010, the employer has a duty to provide reasonable adjustments for disabled employees and job applicants who are placed at a substantial disadvantage because of their disability.

    Reasonable adjustments apply to all workers, including trainees, apprentices, contract workers and business partners. It is the employer’s duty to ensure that any workers with physical or mental disabilities are able to carry out their work without disadvantage.

    One of the most common types of disability discrimination occurs when an employer fails to make reasonable adjustments for a job applicant or worker with disabilities, in which case the worker or job applicant can make a claim of disability discrimination to an Employment Tribunal.

    The Employment Tribunal ruled unanimously that in failing to provide voice software the MoD had breached this duty. As a result, the Tribunal heard, Ms Palomares’ performance was “unjustly criticised” and she was “unfairly threatened with the judicial equivalent of disciplinary sanctions”.

    The Tribunal panel said:

    “As a Tribunal we have had the opportunity to stand back from the detail of this case and look at it holistically. Unfortunately, nobody within the respondent’s organisation was able to do the same. Put simply, the respondent organisation did not know how to handle the claimant’s situation properly. There was no pre-existing policy to deal with a judicial officeholder facing the challenges that were faced by the claimant. We accept and appreciate that the individuals within HMCTS were doing their level best in the circumstances to provide the claimant with what she needed. But in the absence of an appropriate policy or procedure they came up against significant obstacles in doing this.”

    A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice told the Law Society Gazette: “We have noted the judgment and are considering it carefully”.