It’s not very often you get over 200 Judges’s names fill the RCJ against the Ministry of Justice.
Over 200 Judges claimed that they were discriminated against on the basis of their age following the 2012 introduction of new judicial pensions that required employee contributions.
The employment tribunal ruled in favour of the Judges whose claims were for age, sex and race discrimination. The Tribunal found that the changes caused younger Judges to suffer a disproportionate loss to their pensions simply because they were younger.
The ripples of this judgment could extend similar pension protections to employees in other parts of the public sector such as teachers, firefighters and prison officers.
The ruling from the Employment Tribunal is somewhat unsurprising, and the MoJ is going to have to consider other arguments to justify the cuts they are seeking to make to the judiciary if they are going to evade the plethora of discrimination claims that will meet them at appeal….again.
The employment tribunal judgment found that the MoJ and the lord chancellor, who is now the justice secretary, Liz Truss, had discriminated against younger judges by requiring them to leave the judicial pension scheme in April 2015 while allowing older judges to remain in it. That discrimination could not be justified, the tribunal judge Stuart Williams concluded.