The Employment Equality (Religion and Belief) Regulations 2003 and the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003, to give them their proper names. They are called SORB regulations, for
S exual O rientation, R eligion or B elief.

The DTI have produced a range of posters and leaflets on them, which you can access from their page.

For their information on the content and application of the regulations please click here.
 

Background:

The SORB regulations came into effect in the UK in December 2003. Previously it was not unlawful to discriminate against employees on the grounds of their sexual orientation or religion and belief. The only protection against discrimination on the grounds of religious beliefs came under the Race Relations Act 1976, where groups such as Sikhs and Jews were agreed to be ethnic groups. Muslims and Christians were not covered by the definition of ethnic groups.

The regulations came into effect in the UK as part of the European Employment Directive (Council Directive 2000/78/EC). This directive applies to all European Union Member states and sets out the areas in which they must have legislation to prevent discrimination in employment and training.

A simple overview of the regulations

The content of the regulations is described simply and briefly in this section. This is an introduction to them only. For a fuller understanding please consult the materials in the downloads section or the DTI website.

From 2 nd December 2003 , the Employment Equality Regulations (Religions or Belief) 2003 protect against discrimination on the grounds of religion, religious belief or similar philosophical belief. This applies to actual as well as perceived beliefs of friends and family of workers.

The legislation does not define what a philosophical belief is, except that it excludes political beliefs.

From 1 December 2003 the Employment Equality Regulations (Sexual Orientation) Act protects against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation (actual or perceived) and discrimination based on the actual or perceived sexual orientation of friends and family of the worker.

Sexual orientation is defined as an orientation towards the same sex, opposite sex and both sexes. It does not extend to sexual practices and preferences such as sado-masochism and paedophilia.

The regulations prohibit direct and indirect discrimination , harassment and victimisation.

Key points:

These regulations cover workers, who are not just employees. Workers is a broader term and covers, for example, self employed people working at your premises.

It is important to be aware that these regulations cover discrimination based on assumptions about a person's beliefs or sexual orientation.

There is no blanket requirement for the individual to tell the organisation they work for what their sexual orientation is.

The regulations apply if a worker is discriminated against because of the sexual orientation or religion & belief of their family and/or friends, or their assumed religion & belief or sexual orientation.

Philosophical beliefs are defined only as similar to religious beliefs and not including political beliefs. This means that the legislation does not cover requests for time off to campaign for a political party in the elections, but does have to consider the impact of a range of other moral and spiritual beliefs.

Sexual Orientation does not include sexual practices – it is the gender of a consenting adult whom the worker is involved with, not the activities they carry out with them.

Sources of advice on the regulations:

ACAS have produced two booklets, one on each set of regulations. They can be accessed by going to the ACAS website and then right clicking on the name and selecting “save target as” to download them to your computer. The main ACAS homepage can be accessed by clicking here.

The equality section of the DTI website gives you access to the full text of the regulations and other helpful advice.

Please also see our downloads section for the materials funded by this project, and use the members forum area to ask questions.