Eweida & Chaplin, Ladele & McFarlane: submissions to the ECtHR

The National Secular Society has posted on its website its submission to the European Court of Human Rights under Rule 44 §3 of the Rules of the Court in relation to the forthcoming appeals in Nadia Eweida and Shirley Chaplin v the UK 48420/10 [2011] ECHR 738 (12 April 2011) and Lillian Ladele and Gary McFarlane v the UK 51671/10 [2011] ECHR 737 (12 April 2011). The submission, which sets out the opinion of the NSS with admirable clarity, has been prepared on the Society’s behalf by Lord Lester of Herne Hill QC, Dr Ronan McCrea and Max Schaeffer.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has also made a submission to the ECtHR suggesting that in Eweida and Chaplin the domestic courts may have given insufficient weight to Article 9(2) of the Convention but that in Ladele and McFarlane the domestic courts came to the correct conclusions.