Background
LMN, a barrister who also sat part-time as a Deputy District Judge, brought employment tribunal claims arising from another chambers’ refusal of her application for an additional tenancy. Her defended claims included sex discrimination and disability discrimination by association with her disabled child. No findings had yet been made on the merits.
LMN sought anonymity for herself and her child, including protection of her personal and professional names and information that might identify the child. The employment tribunal anonymised the child and certain details—including the child’s condition and regional information—but refused to anonymise LMN in her own right. LMN appealed, principally arguing that publishing either of her names could permit jigsaw identification of the child and undermine the protection already granted.
The Court’s Holding
The Employment Appeal Tribunal upheld the tribunal’s refusal to anonymise LMN on the basis of her own Article 8 and security interests. The tribunal was entitled to find that there was insufficient specific evidence that linking her personal and professional identities, or her status as a judicial officeholder, created a heightened security risk outweighing open justice and the relevant Article 6 and Article 10 considerations.
However, the tribunal had not expressly decided whether LMN’s personal name or professional name also needed to be anonymised to prevent jigsaw identification of her child. That omission was an error because her personal name was connected to the child’s identity, while her current professional name might be linked through a former professional surname. The EAT held that the law did not compel only one answer and remitted those questions to the same employment judge for determination at a hearing, based on the existing facts and information.
Key Takeaways
- An anonymity order protecting a child may require consideration of whether publishing a parent’s name would enable jigsaw identification.
- Judicial office does not itself confer a special entitlement to anonymity, and a claimant seeking protection for personal security reasons must provide sufficiently specific evidence.
- Where the tribunal has not completed the required open-justice and Convention-rights assessment, the EAT may remit the unresolved questions rather than decide them itself.
Why It Matters
The judgment distinguishes a claimant’s unsuccessful request for anonymity in her own right from the separate question whether anonymising her may be necessary to make a child’s anonymity effective. Employment tribunals must address each plausible route to jigsaw identification expressly, even when they have already suppressed other identifying details.
The decision does not grant LMN permanent anonymity or decide the underlying discrimination claims. It requires the employment tribunal to complete the fact-specific balancing exercise concerning her personal and professional names.