Handbook on Identifying and Using Equality Data in Legal Casework

Equality data are a powerful tool for the effective protection of complainants and communities from entrenched bias and exclusion. Based on an analysis of contemporary European legal and policy standards in the field, the Handbook on Identifying and Using Equality Data in Legal Casework demonstrates that accurate and comparable equality data are essential in enabling adjudicators to assess cases of discrimination using a contextual analysis of group vulnerability and marginalisation. Such data allow Equality Bodies as both adjudicators and litigators to better design, implement, and monitor purposeful casework strategies.

This Handbook is designed to assist Equality Bodies to utilise equality data in their legal casework. It identifies and summarizes the best national and supranational practice in terms of framing and deciding cases based on equality data. Depending on their powers, Equality Bodies will benefit from the instrumentalisation of equality data in a variety of roles examined by the Handbook, including as litigators of equality cases before the domestic courts, as adjudicators, investigators or mediators of cases, as legal advisors providing independent assistance to victims, as partners supporting litigating specialist civil society organisations (CSO) by providing input in, or feedback on legal submissions, as providers of legal opinions to government bodies regarding preliminary references to the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU), and as third-party interveners (TPI) before domestic courts, the ECtHR, and the United Nations (UN) Treaty Bodies.

A number of Equality Bodies have been using equality data in one or more of the abovementioned roles. This Handbook draws learning from the practices of six Equality Bodies, highlighting promising examples, challenges, and plans for the future:

• UNIA; Belgium
• The Equality and Anti-Discrimination Ombud (the Ombud); Norway,
• The Netherlands Institute for Human Rights (the Institute); the Netherlands,
• The Advocate of the Principle of Equality (the Advocate); Slovenia,
• The Commissioner for the Protection of Equality (the Commissioner); Serbia,
• The Equality and Human Rights Commission (the EHRC); Great Britain.

Overall, those Equality Bodies, taken together, have been involved in at least 30 national and international legal cases in which they use equality data. The Handbook showcases examples from their diverse legal practices as illustration of the utility of equality data in a range of cases and of the possible legal outcomes of such data’s use.

The Handbook also examines the supranational level of legal practice based on equality data, offering perspectives into the considerable number of cases, in which the two European Courts— the ECtHR and the CJEU—have assessed and relied on equality data. The illustrative synopsis of case law by the two European courts indicates the range of possible sources and types of equality data, and their uses in equality adjudication. The Handbook also looks at supranational policy and jurisprudential standards regarding the validity of equality data in general, deriving guidance from the caselaw on what equality data are considered adequate to base legal arguments and legal reasoning upon.