Published on 12, July, 2020
I’m sure you guys can relate to being fed up with life to the Nth degree. To some degree I want to vent but also I want to make a point hoping at least some people here will agree with me. But I need to start with some background about myself first.
I was diagnosed as an adult. Autism was something that only got picked up during my degree and didn’t get formally diagnosed till much later. Prior to that I’d been home schooled, getting my A levels in a community college. I won’t say autism hasn’t effected my career but it didn’t stop me achieving well academically and getting a job in my chosen career as a scientist.
The one area where autism effects me most in my life is my social life, at this stage it's almost laughable to call it a social life really. I’m actually pretty extroverted. I love spending time with interesting people talking about interesting things. Unfortunately that window of people on my wavelength is pretty narrow and getting less accessible as time goes on. My interests are generally juvenile and nerdy. Obscure video games and anime, weird science and … well things out of the ordinary.
I’m very widely read and my enthusiasm for what I find interesting can come off as arrogant (because I appear to be an authority on everything) or creepy (because I’m generally unable to tell when interest transitions into discomfort for the people I’m talking with unless they express it verbally). I don’t see the line between interesting and disturbing because, well for me it isn’t there to the same extent.
I’ve been banned twice from activity groups and once by a geek themed bar ostensibly for being a ‘weirdo’ and making people feel ‘uncomfortable.’ This is why I’m now taking legal action. I’m not going to elaborate on against who or the specifics of the situation. But I do want to talk about the protection the law affords autistic people and why no one ever seems to have fought for it before.
Because believe me I’ve been reading a lot of case law and I can’t find a case like mine anywhere. The equality act says discrimination arising from disability is illegal. You can not apply the same rule to everyone and say you are not discriminating if the rule penalises people for things that are caused by their disabilities. Not unless you can justify it as a proportionate means of meeting a legitimate aim.
So for example in a school you can’t expel an autistic student for being disruptive unless you can demonstrate you’ve really looked at every alternative.
In fact it's actually illegal to have rules that unfairly penalised the disabled. An example in employment would be the Bowerman v B&Q case where the tribunal ruled that defining ‘unintentional sexual harassment’ as ‘grose misconduct’ without a provision to take autism in to account was discrimination.
If you have an autistic person who is unintentionally causing upset, as far as I can understand the law, you can’t just ban them on the grounds that’s what you’d do to anyone else. You have to have a process to assess to what degree autism contributed to the issue and if the ban meets the legal tests for being a proportionate means of meeting a legitimate aim for which the supreme court has laid down a 4 part test.
This principle has been tested in education and in employment but the equality act says it also applies to goods and services. If you ban an autistic person from a venue, event or other activity offered as a service to the public the same principal should apply.
As an autistic person I rely on fairly neich special interest groups to help me make friends and connect with people on my wavelength. They are basically my social lifeline. I suspect many autistic adults who like me are more or less independent but fairly isolated are similarly reliant on activity groups like that.
So why is it that I’m the first, as far as I can tell, to take a stand on this issue?
Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, none of this is legal advice
Hi Peter,
I do commend you for wanting to change the law in terms of having rights specific to Autistics. I do feel though from personal experience, laws are just hot air unless individuals are willing or mentally able to tackle them each time they encounter discrimination. It is often too tiring to do and not worth it in the outcome that so often happens.
I got in touch with a local MP to raise issues I had encountered with UC. It was taken to parliament along with other service users irks. The politician did explain to me that they would raise the points but that there was so much red tape that the actual system would probably not change.
I have lost/left a lot of jobs because of feeling ostracised because colleagues do not put the same effort into their work being one reason, there are many other reasons. It is important that peoples rights are taken into account and protected in society but I feel that isn't the case sadly. The way society is set up illustrates this in my opinion. There are many companies who have disability badges where I have been employed yet the actual environment is not set up to support people with challenges. I was with a company who were only able to make reasonable adjustments for a short time which meant I would not receive the ongoing support I needed. I had no option but to leave because it meant I'd be back at the beginning when the job changed back to causing me immense anxiety. I could go on with my whole like of examples of discrimination that I have fought or not. Both have the same outcome. Losing my job or having to leave it because I am at the point of severe illness.
I do commend your fighting attitude and your quest to find a group who is your tribe. I do think however that it is futile because humans by nature are adept at pushing out or not accepting differences. I am 45 and have been through the cycle again and again. There is already a disability law as you are well versed in but there is still discrimination.
I do hope that your quest changes something in society whatever form that takes. I just hope that the fight doesn't cause you debilitating mental health issues as it has with me.
Sending all the luck in the world.
In fairness part of the disability law is that you have to take the discriminatior to court yourself.
I had to build my whole case myself without legal help. Had to file all the paperwork for the case myself and pay all the fees for filing that paperwork.
if my case had been assigned to the the fast or multi track and I’d lost, or maybe even if I’d won but hadn’t got the injunction I’d asked for, I could have been facing paying the costs of the other sides lawyers.
It’s not that I didn’t think I could win. I felt the law was on my side. But I couldn’t be sure.
so when it looked like an out of court settlement could fairly resolve the issue I took that path. But as I said the resolution hasn’t felt very fair to me so far.
what we really need is a legal aid charity specifically for autistic people brining section 114 equality act cases. A safety net where they can get a proper lawyer to take there case to court with out worrying about bankrupting themselves.
It's so difficult when fighting for rights especially when finances are not there and some people have barriers to fighting the system even if they wanted to.
I wish you luck in your quest as it sounds like a very traumatising experience from what your posts say especially when you are putting your heart and soul into researching to fight your cause. :-)