Sex discrimination: Dismissal for absence caused by pregnancy was automatically sex discrimination

In Healy v William B Morrison & Son Ltd 30.6.99 (S)EAT 172/99, the EAT holds that an employment tribunal, having found that the dismissal of a woman was by reason of her continued absence from work owing to post-natal depression, should have concluded that she was unlawfully discriminated against on the ground of her sex. A case of unlawful sex discrimination is proved, without the need for any comparison with a man off sick, if, in arriving at a decision to dismiss, an employer takes into account a woman's absence by reason of her pregnancy during the period of maternity leave.