The Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT) have confirmed a decision of the Employment Tribunal that comments about an employee’s baldness were harassment related to sex.
I’m quite sure the barristers loved the case (because they all love secretly to swear in court and it is full of the c-word).
All joking aside, the employee was consistently subjected to “industrial language’ calling him and Old Bald C**t throughout his time there.
The judges concluded:
there is a connection between the word “bald” on the one hand and the protected characteristic of sex on the other. …baldness is much more prevalent in men than women. We find it to be inherently related to sex. (In contrast, we accept that baldness affects (predominantly) adult males of all ages so is inherently not a characteristic of age.)
The Tribunal therefore determines that by referring to the claimant as a “bald cunt” on 24 July 2019 Mr King’s conduct was unwanted, it was a violation of the claimant’s dignity, it created an intimidating etc environment for him, it was done for that purpose, and it related to the claimant’s sex.
For clarity, it was found by the tribunal that the protagonist did not in fact use the word ‘old’ and so the claimant’s claim for age discrimination failed. However, it is obvious that generally calling someone old would amount to age discrimination as well if it was harassment.