Discrimination on grounds of marital status

It is unlawful to discriminate on the grounds of marital status, for example, requiring an employee to be single. However, in the case of Bloomberg Financial Markets v Cumandala [2000] the EAT held that a refusal to appoint an employee, who wanted to commute between London and the job in Madrid, so that he could spend weekends with his wife, did not amount to discrimination on marital grounds. The company would have rejected an applicant who wanted to commute, whatever their reasons. In this case, however, there was also a separate claim of race discrimination, which the EAT did uphold. It said that where a tribunal finds that there are no reasons why an individual should not have been appointed, other than their race and where the employers believed that the successful white candidate would "fit in", then it should infer discrimination.