Your employer can’t run a discrimination grievance separately from a live disciplinary.

The situation

Her employer dismissed a solicitor for gross misconductBehaviour serious enough that your employer is entitled to dismiss you immediately without notice. Common examples include theft, violence, or serious dishonesty, but what counts depends on your emplo..., after finding she had been insubordinate and had mishandled client matters. During the disciplinary process she raised perimenopause as an underlying cause of her conduct. She also raised a separate grievance alleging disability discrimination, along with a complaint about equal pay. Her employer kept the discrimination grievance apart from the live disciplinary process and dismissed her anyway. The tribunal heard her claims for unfair dismissalA legal claim you can bring if your employer dismissed you without a fair reason or without following a fair process. You normally need two years of continuous employment to qualify, though some dismi..., disability discrimination and victimisationBeing treated badly because you've raised a complaint, supported someone else's complaint, or done something else the law protects, such as raising a grievance or whistleblowing. It is unlawful in its... over eight days.

What the tribunal found

The tribunal dismissed every one of her claims. Her perimenopause symptoms did not meet the legal test for disability under the Equality Act 2010. Her dismissal also fell within the range of responses a reasonable employer could have taken, applying section 98 of the Employment Rights Act 1996. But the tribunal was still critical of her employer. The investigation report and dismissal letter left out factors that should have counted in her favour, something the tribunal called "troubling" and "difficult to understand why". The wording of a suspension letter also suggested anger at the separate equal pay complaint she had raised. Keeping her discrimination grievance completely separate from the live disciplinary process was, in the tribunal's own words, an approach that "could have led the respondent into serious error".

Raising a health condition part-way through a disciplinary process will not automatically stop that process or protect you from dismissal. Tribunals test each condition against a specific legal definition. Naming the condition is not enough on its own. What matters is its impact: a substantial, long-term effect on your daily life. Plenty of real health conditions fall short of that bar.

Your employer still has to properly consider what you have said and act on it. A discrimination grievance raised while a disciplinary is still live has to be weighed as part of that process and connected to the conduct issue at hand. Running it on a completely different timeline, handled by separate people with no communication between them, is exactly the kind of failure that gets criticised even when the employer wins overall.

If you have raised, or are thinking about raising, a health condition or a related discrimination grievance during your own disciplinary process, talk to someone who can look at the specific facts. Whether your condition meets the legal threshold for disability is one question worth getting answered properly. Whether your employer handled the two processes correctly is another, and it can matter even if the disability question goes against you.