In Gareddu v London Underground Ltd, Gareddu (G) is a practising Roman Catholic from Sardinia. Each August he and his two brothers return to the area of Sardinia where their mother continues to live in order to be together and to attend religious festivals. G is entitled to 38 days’ holiday per year and between 2009 and 2013 he had been permitted to take five consecutive weeks of annual leave in the summer during which he returned to Sardinia. A new manager told him that for the next year he would not be permitted to take five weeks’ continuous leave and would likely be granted no more than 15 days of leave during the summer school holiday period. G claimed indirect religious discrimination.

An ET accepted that G’s participation in religious festivals may constitute a manifestation of religious belief. However, the ET rejected his claim. G’s attendance at any particular festival is entirely dependent on the views of his family and friends. It is not the case that he invariably attends a series of festivals to the same saints. Particularising which festivals to be attended was a matter for family consultation. During the last year he attended only nine of the 17 festivals he listed. G’s motive for wanting five weeks off work related to the family arrangements rather than his religious beliefs or their manifestation. Therefore, G’s asserted religious belief had not been made in good faith.

The EAT rejected G’s appeal. The ET had been entitled to find that G’s assertion that his religious belief requires him to return to Sardinia for a period of a five weeks around the month of August each year to attend and participate in religious festivals was simply not true. He had not invariably attended a series of festivals to the same saints each year, nor had he attended the same number of festivals each year, and indeed in the last year he had only attended nine of the 17.
Furthermore, the EAT rejected G’s argument that the ET erred by adopting an approach of weighing up the religious reasons for his desire to travel against non-religious, family reasons. The mere fact that attendance at a single festival is a genuine manifestation of religious belief does not inevitably mean that attendance for a five-week period to do so is also a genuine manifestation. For example, if a churchgoing family man asserts that he requires a whole weekend off work to attend church with his family but in truth only attends church on Sunday and goes shopping with his family on Saturday, the fact that his assertion is partly true (in relation to his Sunday attendance) does not prevent a tribunal ET from determining whether his asserted requirement for a whole weekend off work in order to manifest his religious belief is a genuine one.

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