‘Sorry I can’t understand your accent’ could be racial discrimination

Tribunal judge makes ruling after university worker criticised over her ‘strong’ Brazilian accent 

Telling someone with a foreign accent you can’t understand them could be racial harassment, a senior tribunal judge has said.

• Commenting on or criticising the way someone from another country or ethnic group speaks could breach employment law, Judge James Tayler said.

The senior circuit judge of the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) made the ruling following a case about a university worker who sued when she received criticism over her “strong” Brazilian accent.

• “Comments about a person’s accent could be related to the protected characteristic of race,” he said at the appeal tribunal...