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In a recent case the EAT held that an employee’s belief in climate change could amount to a philosophical belief for the purposes of the Religion or Belief Regulations. In Grainger plc v Nicholson the claimant claimed he had been dismissed for his climate change beliefs. His philosophical belief affected most aspects of his life.

The tribunal took note of an earlier decision where it had been held that for a belief to qualify for protection, it must have cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance and to be worthy of respect in a civilised society. The tribunal found that the claimant’s beliefs fulfilled the requirements of the regulations. On appeal, the EAT set out a series of guidelines for determining a philosophical belief:

• The belief must be genuinely held.
• It must be a belief and not, as in McClintock, an opinion or viewpoint based on information currently available.
• It must be a belief as to a weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour.
• It must attain a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance.
• It must be worthy of respect in a democratic society, not be incompatible with human dignity and not conflict with the fundamental rights of others.
• Although the word 'similar' was removed from the Regulations by the Equality Act 2006, it is still necessary for the belief to have a similar status or cogency to a religious belief in order to be protected.
• As the EAT's decision in Eweida v British Airways plc (Brief 867) shows, a belief is not required to be shared by others in order to come within the protection of the Regulations.
• A philosophical belief does not need to 'allude to a fully-fledged system of thought' that governs the entirety of a person's life, provided it satisfies the criteria above. Thus, one-off beliefs such as pacifism or vegetarianism can be protected.