If you want to make a claim for direct discrimination you need to compareyour treatment with the treatment of someone else. This person is called a comparator.
Read this page to find out more about comparators in direct discrimination cases.
What’s a comparator?
Direct discrimination is when you’re treated worse than someone else for certain reasons – for example, because you’re disabled or because you’re black. The Equality Act 2010 calls these reasons protected characteristics.
If you want to show you’ve suffered direct discrimination, you need to compareyour treatment with the treatment of someone else who doesn’t have the same protected characteristic as you. The Equality Act calls this person a comparator.
The comparator is someone who’s in the same or similar enough situation to you, but who doesn’t have the same protected characteristic.
What’s meant by someone in a similar enough situation?
It’s not necessary for you to be in an identical situation as the comparator. But there must be sufficient similarities between the two of you to show that the reason for the worse treatment is the protected characteristic and not something else.
If there isn’t an actual person you can compare yourself with
The comparator can be a real person. But, sometimes it’s not possible to find a real person who’s in the same or similar enough situation to you, because the situation you’re in has never happened before. If this is the case, you can use a hypothetical comparator.
You may be able to find someone whose circumstances are similar enough to show your treatment was because of your protected characteristic.
You can use the treatment of several other people as evidence
In other situations, you may need to get evidence about the treatment of several other people to show that someone in a similar situation, but without your protected characteristic, would have been treated better.
If it’s obvious you’ve been discriminated against
Sometimes it’s possible to show you were discriminated against just by concentrating on the reason for your treatment. If it’s clear you were treated badly because of a protected characteristic, the court can find you’ve been discriminated against without having to look at evidence about a comparator.
Finding a comparator in disability discrimination cases
If you’re directly discriminated against because of disability, the comparator is someone who doesn’t share your disability but who has the same abilities and skills as you. The comparator can be someone who’s not disabled or someone with a different disability.