This article was originally published on 12 February 2025. It was also posted on my Substack.

The Employment Tribunal has ruled on a harassment claim which involved the African Caribbean religious tradition of Vodun (generally known as ‘Voodoo’).

The case is Wint v Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council 1306321/2023, and judgment was given at the end of last month.

The claimant, Carl Wint, was an employee of the housing department of a local authority. He came from an African Caribbean background, and he was suing the authority for racial and religious harassment under the Equality Act 2010.

The case originated from an exchange between Mr Wint and another employee, Mandy Shone. It appears that Mr Wint and Miss Shone had started off having a reasonably good relationship. The tribunal found that “both Miss Shone and the claimant used to laugh, joke and flirt in the workplace”. Miss Shone was described by a manager as a “model employee”.

Any amicability between Mr Wint and Miss Shone ended after the incident at the centre of the case, which took place on 17 July 2023. Miss Shone made a comment to Mr Wint about Vodun, although precisely what she said was disputed. Three differing versions of it were presented to the tribunal:

• Miss Shone’s version: “I am like a voodoo doll [needing] to stick needles in my eyes” in order to keep them open. This was a reference to a night shift that she had had to cover for Mr Wint.
• Mr Wint’s version: “I should have sent you a voodoo doll with pins in it”, emphasising the word “pins”.
• Mrs McKenzie-Plummer’s version (manager): “I would rather have stuck pins in my eyes like a voodoo doll than covered that shift.”

Mr Wint is not a practitioner of Vodun. He is a devout Christian, and he claimed that he replied that he was “covered by the blood of Jesus” (although the tribunal found that he did not in fact say this).

The fact that the claimant was not a practitioner of Vodun is legally irrelevant. If you make (say) an antisemitic joke against one of your employees and she turns out not to be Jewish, good luck running that as a defence in tribunal.

As a result of what happened, Mr Wint went on sick leave shortly after the incident. Miss Shone likewise went on sick leave on 29 July 2024 “due to work related stress, linked to the issues arising in this claim”.

The law

The employer did not concede that Vodun is a religion. If it was not a religion, Mr Wint’s claim for religious harassment could not succeed.

So – is Vodun a religion? The law relating to definitions of religion is not straightforward. I have written about it elsewhere in connection with revived Pagan religious traditions.

One leading textbook, Harvey on Industrial Relations and Employment Law, contains the following comment on the case-law on religions: “This serves presumably to exclude witchcraft, voodoo and the like.” The tribunal disregarded this comment on the basis that it represented only “the writer’s personal interpretation”.

The tribunal concluded that Vodun is indeed a religion:

127. ….There are temples, priests, a divinity and spirits, which provides a clear structure. There is a clear belief system in Bondye [the ultimate deity]… and what that divinity represents, along with spirits, with morality being focussed in large part on the interrelationship with the Iwa [spirits] and respect for the Bondye’s power.

128. We conclude that this is a spiritual belief system which is held by a group of adherents (and on a worldwide basis we note that there are a large number of people who follow Vodou / Voodoo, some openly and some less so). It explains mankind’s place in the universe and relationship with the infinite by reference to its divinity and spirits. Whilst there is no clear definition of what is good and what is evil set out centrally in any code or text, there is clear teaching that adherents should live their lives in conformity with the Iwa and what they represent. Applying R (on the application of Hodkin and anor) (above) we consider that Voodoo / Vodou is a religion.

Hodkin, by the way, is an interesting case on Scientology which had nothing to do with employment law. See further my earlier article.

The tribunal went on to note that voodoo dolls are something of a red herring here, as they have little or nothing to do with Vodun as it is actually practised (as opposed to representations in popular entertainment).

In order for something to be recognised as a religion for the purposes of the Equality Act, it must meet five criteria set out in a case known as Grainger (which dealt with secular philosophical beliefs regarding climate change). This is how the judges applied the Grainger criteria in this case:

1. The belief must be genuinely held. This was a difficult point because Mr Wint was not himself an adherent of Vodun. The tribunal essentially decided to ignore the criterion.

2. It must be a belief and not an opinion or viewpoint based on the present state of information available. This criterion was satisfied. Vodun is “more than just an opinion or viewpoint”. But belief in voodoo dolls alone would not meet the criterion.

3. It must be a belief as to a weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour. Vodun meets this criterion. “For example, it has a concept of morality and explains mankind’s place in the universe. Again, the Voodoo Doll alone would not meet that threshold as it is not a belief on a fundamental problem in our view, nor is it about a weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour.”

4. It must attain a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance. Tick. “Whilst there are differences in different countries, it is nevertheless coherent as a belief system with similarities across those practices, is intelligible and capable of being understood.”

5. It must be worthy of respect in a democratic society, be not incompatible with human dignity and not conflict with the fundamental rights of others. Tick. But belief in voodoo dolls would be “one of those rare beliefs which would fall foul” of the criterion.

So Vodun is a religion, but a belief in voodoo dolls is not. Mr Wint was claiming that Miss Shone had harassed him for being a supposed adherent of Vodun, not merely a supposed believer in voodoo dolls, so his claim cleared this hurdle.

The outcome

Mr Wint lost the case.

This was because the judges accepted that Miss Shone had merely been using a metaphor for extreme tiredness, in reference to herself (a white person not of Caribbean heritage). They considered that Mr Wint had subsequently become offended at the comment on the basis of a misremembered version of it, after discussing it with his daughter.

The judges accepted that Mr Wint’s version of the comment – in which Miss Shone allegedly referred to sticking pins into a voodoo doll – could indeed have amounted to unlawful harassment. But that was not what she had said.

The judges commented that, since Vodun can be a sensitive subject, it “was perhaps ill advised for Miss Shone to refer to it in the workplace”.

An odd feature

This case was exceptional in one major way. None of the parties happened to be members of the religious tradition under discussion. If Mr Wint had indeed been a practitioner of Vodun, one would have expected him to have presented evidence relating to his relationship with the tradition, or to have produced witnesses who could inform the tribunal about it. But he wasn’t. The tribunal had to make findings about Vodun without hearing any submissions or evidence from a Vodun practitioner – although the judges did see fit to look at two dictionaries and at Wikipedia.

This was an unsatisfactory state of affairs. And, to be fair, the judges were not idiots and showed themselves to be perfectly well aware of the problem. They stated in the judgment that they had reached their conclusions “in full knowledge that a different Tribunal might be provided with different material on which to base their own conclusions.” In any event, an Employment Tribunal cannot set binding precedents, so this decision does not change the legal position.

It will be interesting to see if the subject is re-litigated in future proceedings, and if so what the outcome is.