Today’s ruling [1] by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in which three British Christians lost their claims 
against religious discrimination has “sent out the wrong message about the position of religious faith in Britain today,” according to Theos, a leading religion and society think tank.
The ECHR ruled that three out of four Britons who took their cases to the court had not been discriminated against, and that Britain had “a wide margin of appreciation” when it came to religious discrimination legislation.
The court found against nurse, Shirley Chaplin who wanted to wear her cross to work; marriage counsellor, Gary McFarlane who did not want to give sex advice to gay couples on religious grounds, and civil registrar Lillian Ladele who did not want to register civil unions between same-sex couples, also on religious grounds.
However it found that former British Airways check-in attendant, Nadeia Eweida, had a right to wear a cross to her workplace.
Theos director Elizabeth Oldfield said that disputes around religious freedom were “an inevitable part of living in a free and diverse society”.
But she said that courts seemed to erring “on the side of limiting rather than accommodating religious freedom”.
She said: “One does not have to agree with the beliefs of the applicants to support their cases. It should not be beyond the wit of an employer to work with strongly-held religious commitments, rather than dismiss them. However, what we are increasingly seeing is an unwillingness to accommodate them reasonably.”
The court found that there had been a violation of Article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights, which relates to freedom of religion in the case of Ms Eweida, but unanimously found that in the cases of Ms Chaplain and Mr McFarlane that there was no breach of Article 9 or Article 14 relating to discrimination.
In the case of Ms Ladelle, the court ruled by a majority of five to two that there had been no violation of Articles 9 and 14.
Ms Chaplain had claimed that restrictions forbidding her to wear a cross at the hospital in which she worked was a breach of her freedom of religion.
Ms Eweida made the same claim in respect of British Airways.
The court ruled that, in the case of Ms Eweida, the British domestic courts had accorded too much weight to the employer’s wish to project its corporate image, as against her right to manifest her religious faith.
However, in the case of Ms Chaplain, they held that, while her wish to bear witness to her faith at work “weighed heavily in the balance,” her employers were well placed to make the decision that the cross impacted adversely on clinical health and safety, and that this consideration “was inherently more important”.
The court also found that, in the cases of Mr McFarlane and Ms Ladelle, “it could not be said that the national courts had failed to strike a fair balance” in upholding their employers’ decisions to sack them.
Mr McFarlane, an employee of relationship counselling agency Relate, was dismissed from his job for refusing to give sex advice to homosexual couples.
Ms Ladelle was dismissed for refusing to carry out same-sex civil union ceremonies.
In respect of both cases, the court held that the policies of the applicants’ employers in requiring employees had a legitimate aim “to secure the rights of others which are also protected under the Convention,” such as gay couples.
It said: “The Court generally allows the national authorities a wide margin of appreciation when it comes to striking a balance between competing Convention rights.
“In all the circumstances, the Court does not consider that the national authorities, that is the local authority employer which brought the disciplinary proceedings and also the domestic courts which rejected the applicant’s discrimination claim, exceeded the margin of appreciation available to them.”