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10 December 2020 / Nicholas Dobson
Issue: 7914 / Categories: Features , Charities , Housing , Local government
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Beyond the looking-glass: discriminating charities

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R (on the application of Z) v Hackney London Borough Council: Nicholas Dobson navigates the Supreme Court’s path through a hall of mirrors
  • A housing charity did not unlawfully discriminate when in pursuance of its charitable objects it allocated all its properties to members of the Orthodox Jewish community.

In his 1872 masterpiece, Oxford Christ Church mathematics lecturer Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, (otherwise known as Lewis Carroll) introduced us to Tweedledum and Tweedledee. After Alice had regaled them by reciting an ‘old song’, they gave her a short philosophical disquisition:

‘I know what you’re thinking about,’ said Tweedledum: ‘but it isn’t so, nohow.’

‘Contrariwise,’ continued Tweedledee, ‘if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.’

Such clarity of concept came to mind at times when navigating some of the arguments in a 16 October 2020 Supreme Court decision on anti-discrimination law and charities. This was R (on the application of Z and another) v Hackney London Borough Council and another [2020] UKSC 40, [2020]

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