Frédéric Hay v. Crédit Agricole Mutuel De Charente-Maritime Et Des Deux-Sèvres (E.C.J.)

On December 12, 2013, the Fifth Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ or the Court) issued its decision in Frédéric Hay v. Crédit Agricole Mutuel de Charente-Maritime et des Deux-Sévres (the Hay decision), an important ruling on the rights of same-sex couples in the workplace. Certain provisions in a collective agreement allowed employees to claim particular benefits on the occasion of a marriage, but not on the occasion of the conclusion of a form of civil partnership. The Court found that, since at the relevant time homosexual couples were only permitted to enter into civil partnership and not marriage under French law, the impugned provisions constituted direct discrimination based on sexual orientation and were therefore prohibited by the 2000 Employment Equality Framework Directive (the Equality Directive).