What happened
Chris Palmer applied for an £80,000 role at a financial services company. At interview, he was told the company wanted to hire “fewer white men”. The role went to a woman. He brought a discrimination claim.
What the tribunal ruled
The tribunal dismissed his claims. Judge Tamara Lewis held that although an organisation may aspire to be “less dominated by white men”, that does not by itself show an “intention to achieve that objective by discriminating in recruitment against white men” in the specific hiring decision.
Why we include a case that lost
Because it captures where the line currently sits — and what it feels like to stand on the wrong side of it.
The law is clear that picking a worse-qualified candidate because of race or sex is unlawful, whoever it favours. But an employer can now say “fewer white men” out loud in an interview and, without more, a claim fails. Run the substitution test: imagine that sentence spoken about any other group in the room. That asymmetry — in what can be said, and what a claimant must then prove — is precisely what this campaign exists to challenge.
Losing cases are part of honest evidence. We publish them too.