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Religious Organisations

Our clients include religious organisations from a wide range of religions ranging from Christians of all denominations (including Catholics, Church of England, Baptists, Methodists and independent Churches) Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist. 

We advise on a variety of legal issues and have been involved in some of the leading cases in this area of law and successfully acted:

• in a case involving the first test of the extent to which religious organisations can make religious belief and practice a “genuine occupational requirement”;
• in a matter which gave rise to the first decision of the New Supreme Court in relation to religious qualifications for school admission policies;
• for one of the catholic adoption agencies in their appeal against the Charity Commission’s refusal to allow it to take advantage of an exemption which would permit it to discriminate in favour of heterosexual adopting couples; and
• in a case addressing the question of whether religious grounds are valid for wearing a niquab headscarf.

We have also taken the lead in relation to obtaining approval from the Charity Commission for charitable registration of certain closed religious communities in the light of changing circumstances, and overcoming the historical objections that were established in the case of Coates v Gilmore.