LEGAL REPORT/Labour & employment
A coming of age for
family status
Two Federal Court rulings this year have highlighted the continuing
evolution of this protected ground of discrimination.
A
sk any employer to
write down prohibited
grounds of discrimination under human
rights legislation, and
they'll probably reel off usual suspects
like race, religion, and disability. The
chances are family status will come a
lot further down the list, if it appears
at all. But employment lawyers say two
Federal Court decisions and a demo50
November/December
2013
graphic crunch could change all that in
the next few years.
Both judgments were delivered earlier this year by Federal Court Justice
Leonard Mandamin, who agreed with the
Canadian Human Rights Tribunal that
the Canadian Border Services Agency
and Canadian National Railway had discriminated against employees by failing to
accommodate their childcare needs.
The decisions mark a coming of age
www.CANADIAN
L a w ye r m a g . c o m
for family status, according to Stuart
Rudner, founding partner of Toronto
employment law boutique Rudner
MacDonald LLP. "This was the next
logical step in the continuing evolution
of family status as a protected ground,
which we have been experiencing over
several decades. Originally, it was there to
protect employees, mostly women, from
being fired simply because they were
married. Over time, people, generally,
Ashley Mackenzie
By Michael McKiernan
