Birmingham City Council v Abdulla & Others Case Study

Birmingham City Council v Abdulla & Others - Case Study Example The actual case to be determined by the Supreme Court was not whether the plaintiffs should be paid the equal pay claims they were seeking from the Birmingham City Council; rather, it was purely a case of jurisdiction. In the case that was presented before the high court, former employees of Birmingham the City Council were demanding to be paid equal employment claims after realizing that some of their ex-colleagues had been compensated for the same by the council (Old Square Chambers, 2012). However, while the claims that the former employees were raising could be genuine and valid, the legal issue that arises in the case is that by the time they realized that their ex-colleagues had been compensated for the equal pay claims, it was already too late since 6 months had expired. The law pertaining to this situation provides that a claimant has 6 months to present their employment claims to the Employment Tribunal from the date of the wrongdoing by the employer, after which such claims would not be admissible to the Tribunal (Honeyball, 2012, p. 47). However, the same law provides that the claimants have up to 6 years to present any claim to the civil courts, from the date of a wrongful act. Therefore, finding that their claim could not be admitted by the Employment Tribunal, the claimants presented the case before a civil court. In return, the Birmingham City Council filed a response to the court seeking to have the case struck out of the civil court, on the basis that such a case was better dealt with by the Employment Tribunal, as opposed to the civil court (Old Square Chambers, 2012). The high court upheld that the case could be heard by the civil court since its circumstances did not qualify the exceptional circumstances against which a case could be struck out of the civil court and be referred to the Employment Tribunal. The defendant, in this case, the Birmingham City Council, filed an appeal regarding the high court decision, which was also rejected by t he Court of Appeal, which held the same ruling that the Supreme Court had given. It is upon the rejection of the appeal by the Court of Appeal that Birmingham the City Council filed the case for determination by the Supreme Court, so that the Supreme Court could determine whether the case could be struck out of the civil court and referred back to the Employment Tribunal (Honeyball, 2012, p. 47). Facts of the Case The case Birmingham City Council v Abdulla & Others [2012] is a case falling under the employment law, specifically under the Equality Act 2010, which provides that both the male and female workers shall be compensated the same for the services they deliver to an employer, which requires similar efforts and for which similar qualifications are required (Barnard & Hepple, 2004, p. 22). According to this act, if a woman’s contract is based on no less favorable terms compared to those of men, and the woman does the same roles and she is in the same employment, terms of equality should be applied for both men and women (Hepple, 2011, p. 54). However previously, the employer, in this case, the Birmingham City Council, had not compensated both women and men equally for their contracts for which they delivered their services to the council.