At­tor­ney Veera Bha­jan is to be im­me­di­ate­ly re­in­stat­ed to her po­si­tion as a lay as­ses­sor in the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Tri­bunal (EOT) af­ter the Court of Ap­peal ruled in her favour and dis­missed the ap­peal brought by Don­na Prow­ell-Raphael, chair­man of the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Tri­bunal.

The judges up­held the High Court’s de­ci­sion that Bha­jan was wrong­ful­ly pre­vent­ed from as­sum­ing her role as a lay-as­ses­sor at the tri­bunal and ruled that the chair­man act­ed out­side her au­thor­i­ty. The court found that Bha­jan was valid­ly ap­point­ed and that the chair­man had no au­thor­i­ty to block her ap­point­ment. The judges agreed that the chair­man’s ac­tions were il­le­gal, an abuse of pow­er, and con­trary to the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Act.

The court re­ject­ed the chair­man’s claim that the High Court judge showed bias, say­ing: “Strong lan­guage used in the judg­ment does not nec­es­sar­i­ly trans­late in­to ac­tu­al bias.”

The on­ly as­pect of the High Court rul­ing that was mod­i­fied was the re­moval of le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion as a ground for re­lief.

In No­vem­ber 2021, Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes ap­point­ed Veera Bha­jan as a lay-as­ses­sor at the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Tri­bunal (EOT). Lay-as­ses­sors as­sist the tri­bunal in ad­ju­di­cat­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion cas­es.

Don­na Prow­ell-Raphael, the tri­bunal’s chair­man, re­fused to fa­cil­i­tate Bha­jan’s ap­point­ment, claim­ing that the tri­bunal did not have the re­sources to ac­com­mo­date her.

The chair­man al­so ques­tioned whether Bha­jan met the nec­es­sary qual­i­fi­ca­tions, ar­gu­ing that she had not yet served ten years as an at­tor­ney.

In De­cem­ber 2021, the Pres­i­dent amend­ed Bha­jan’s ap­point­ment, ex­plic­it­ly in­clud­ing her le­gal and so­cial wel­fare ex­pe­ri­ence as part of her qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

De­spite this clar­i­fi­ca­tion, the chair­man still re­fused to al­low Bha­jan to take up her po­si­tion.

In the rul­ing, the court award­ed Bha­jan $185,000 in dam­ages and or­dered the tri­bunal to fa­cil­i­tate her ap­point­ment.

Bha­jan was rep­re­sent­ed by Ra­jiv Chaitoo.

In a re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia, Bha­jan said she was still pro­cess­ing the judg­ment. On a Face­book post she said, “A seem­ing­ly nev­er-end­ing jour­ney which I was des­tined to walk. Some days I walked in fear, sad­ness, anx­i­ety, shame. Oth­er days I walked with re­silience, strength, grace. Both days I kept walk­ing, trust­ing that I was nev­er alone on this jour­ney.”