Employment tribunal erred in law in not granting anonymity, EAT finds

A university lecturer who brought an employment tribunal claim against his employer has won his bid for anonymity after the employment tribunal initially rejected the application. 

Sitting in the Employment Appeal Tribunal, His Honour Judge Barklem, Natalie Swift and Andrew Hammon substituted the tribunal’s decision for its own that both parties will be anonymised throughout the proceedings.

The claimant, referred to as F, made multiple complaints of disability discrimination against J, his former employer. F has Aspergers syndrome and had, the judgment said, ‘concealed the fact that he had this disability for his entire working life from both family and employers, although he had made it known to the employer against whom the present claim had been brought’.

It added: ‘He was concerned, both from personal experience, as well as widely available material including academic research, that, were knowledge of his disability to become public it would have a serious adverse effect on his employability. He had indicated that he would not proceed with his claim absent anonymity.’

The EAT said the employment tribunal had ‘set out too high a test for the claimant to surmount’ in his application for anonymity adding: ‘It is inherently impossible to prove what will happen in the future. Medical and psychological evidence could well demonstrate the extent of the claimant’s disability, but could not possibly address the issue whether autism carried with it the stigma that the claimant asserted, and which gave rise to the fears which grounded his application.

‘What F had to prove was that he had a reasonable foundation for his belief. We consider that is a relatively low evidential threshold.’

The judgment in F v J said the ET erred in law in setting the wrong test for F to satisfy ‘in requiring him to prove objectively that his fears were well grounded, it was setting the bar too high as too would have been requiring medical evidence which could not possibly meet the specific concern that the claimant had raised’.

Finding F’s concerns are ‘genuinely held by him’, the EAT said the material it had seen ‘suggests that the belief is reasonable’.

Considering the open justice principle, the judgment said the identity of the parties was not critical to public understanding of the case.