UK Government tells High Court: Same-sex couples may be shut out of Article 14
22 January 2016
Special Guest Post by Professor Robert Wintemute
On 19-20 January, the England and Wales High Court (Mrs. Justice Andrews) heard the judicial review of the ban on different-sex civil partnerships brought by Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan. It was argued on behalf of the supposedly LGBTI-friendly UK Government (represented by Nicky Morgan, the Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Women and Equalities) that the High Court should follow two anti-LGBTI decisions from 2006.
The first is Secretary of State for Work and Pensions v. M, in which the House of Lords ruled (Baroness Hale dissenting) that the Human Rights Act 1998 did not require that a lesbian couple be treated in the same way as an unmarried different-sex couple, with regard to child support payments (see Wintemute, [2006] EHRLR 722). The second is Wilkinson v. Kitzinger, in which the High Court, relying on M., found no obligation under the HRA to recognise the Canadian marriage of a British lesbian couple as a marriage (rather than a civil partnership) in the UK. The M. case went on to the European Court of Human Rights, which found sexual orientation discrimination violating Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (J.M. v. UK, 2010),
The UK Government now claims that the M. and Wilkinson decisions from 2006 prevent Steinfeld and Keidan from relying on Article 14 in 2016, because their exclusion from civil partnership (but not marriage) does not have a sufficient impact on their Article 8 right to respect for their family life, putting their case “outside the ambit” of Article 8. The UK Government insists that the law is frozen as it was in 2006, despite the legal and social changes of the last decade. In Schalk & Kopf v. Austria (2010), the ECtHR declared that same-sex couples have “family life”, overruling its 2001 Mata Estevez decision to the contrary, which the M. and Wilkinson courts had cited. In Vallianatos & Others v. Greece (2013), the ECtHR ruled that same-sex couples excluded from Greece’s civil partnership law could invoke Article 14, even if the law would give them no more rights than they could obtain through private contracts, because “civil partnerships … as an officially recognised alternative to marriage have an intrinsic value for the applicants irrespective of the legal effects, however narrow or extensive, that they would produce”. And, of course, the coming into force of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, in March 2014, was supposed to represent the achievement of full legal equality for same-sex couples in England and Wales, and an end to UK Government support for discrimination against them.
Despite these developments, the effect of the UK Government’s argument (if accepted by lower UK courts) is that same-sex couples may be shut out of Article 14, in the same way as Steinfeld and Keidan, and find themselves unable to claim discrimination under Article 14 of the HRA, until the UK Supreme Court overrules its mistaken application of the “within the ambit” test in M. This could mean that same-sex couples in Northern Ireland cannot rely on Article 14 (combined with Article 8 as opposed to Article 12) in challenging their exclusion from marriage, because they have access to civil partnership. Similarly, if a town hall in England and Wales were to create separate waiting rooms for same-sex and different-sex couples seeking to register their relationships, the UK Government’s reasoning would preclude an Article 14 challenge by a same-sex couple under the HRA, because the separate waiting room would not have a sufficient impact on their family life.
This is not the first time that the UK Government has supported discrimination against same-sex couples. In 2007, it argued at the hearing in the Maruko case in the Court of Justice of the European Union that Directive 2000/78 banning sexual orientation discrimination in employment does not apply to employment benefits linked to marital status, because of Recital 22 in its preamble. The CJEU disagreed, finding that pension plans must provide the same survivor’s benefits to the civil partners of employees as they do to the spouses of employees (in Germany and other EU countries where civil partnership exists and is sufficiently similar to marriage).
Later in 2007, the UK Government intervened in Schalk & Kopf v. Austria. It agreed with the Austrian Government that Articles 14 and 8 of the Convention did not require European governments to pass laws for same-sex couples, like the UK’s Civil Partnership Act 2004, because the absence of “a specific mechanism for legal recognition or registration of same-sex relationships has not been shown to have a significant impact on the ability to develop and maintain such relationships”. Although the ECtHR in Schalk & Kopf found no such obligation prior to 1 January 2010, it held in Oliari & Others v. Italy (2015) that Italy must provide a “specific legal framework” for same-sex couples. The ECtHR noted that, by June 2015, the majority of Council of Europe member states (24 of 47) had some form of civil partnership law.
I would like to think that the UK Government consistently supports equality for same-sex couples in the UK and the rest of Europe, at least since the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013. It is very disappointing to learn that, in 2016, the UK Government is willing to invoke the overly strict and out-dated application of the “within the ambit” test in M. and Wilkinson, to argue that same-sex (and different-sex) couples are barred from claiming discrimination under Article 14 of the HRA.
Robert Wintemute is Professor of Human Rights Law at King’s College London.
[…] is a powerful argument over on the UK Human Rights Blog (written before the judgment) about why this might be […]
Man made Laws require constant changing and updating.
Man needs ‘RE-form’ in accordance with the never changing, the never updating Law.
This is the Natural Law.
Creatures in the wild, conform to this Law.
What has happened to man?
Man and Woman are made to procreate. Animals have the natural instinct.
Man and Woman waiting in a common waiting room will never feel shy or ashamed.
It is time Judgement in all incidents are in accordance with the Natural Law, failing which,
Sink holes will increase in speed and size, dissolving entire United Kingdom.
May we have Peace through compliance with the Natural Law.
There is another way – but please don’t shout at me until you read all that I write.
I firmly believe that marriage should be for one man and one woman who have made a life-long commitment to each other. Civil Partnerships and Same-sex Marriage should be scrapped.
CPs and SSMs have not created ‘equality’ because they were always fundamentally flawed in a whole variety of ways, not least that they are not available to two people who are close blood relatives, e.g. brother or sisters. Also their underlying purpose was not to give financial equality to any two people who choose to care for each other and share their lives together, but rather to legitimise intimate sexual activity outside of traditional marriage.
If we all adopted celibacy before marriage and monogamy within marriage we wouldn’t be living with the enormous health, housing, emotional and financial challenges that have resulted from a culture of ‘anyone can have sex with anyone whenever they are both over the legal age and both consent’. The ‘freedom’ to have multiple sexual partners of either sex has resulted in there being 12 million AIDS orphans in Africa. Yes, that is the official UN figure. More children have been orphaned in Africa in the name of sexual freedom than live in the UK.
So we need to de-couple sexual freedom from financial commitment.
If ANY two people want to make a life-long commitment to share their (non-sexual) lives and to support and care for each other then they can enter into a ‘Financial Covenant’ (FC).
An FC would give them financial equality with married couples, but no more than that.
You must lke the idea of being well and truly flamed, Richard, flamed to a crisp!
[…] On the UKHR blog, Robert Wintemute, Professor of Human Rights Law at King’s College London, commented on the implications of the case for same-sex civil partnerships in a special guest post UK Government tells High Court: Same-sex couples may be shut out of Article 14. […]
Dismayed to find our equal marriage case of a decade ago used in this way
Ms K; your case has been reversed by statute as regards same-sex couples; fine, that’s the democratic way. But it remains good law except so far as Parliament has abrogated it and the Government is not free to ignore it. Neither is the Court, although the Court of Appeal could overrule it.
HMG’s position seems to be one of it being fine for some to have to sit at the back of the bus so long as everyone’s allowed to alight at the same stop.
Counsel must put the law before the court as it is and these cases are part of it, unless the Court decides not to follow them. The Crown cannot announce that these two cases are not to be followed.