Criminal Justice (Hate Offences) Act 2024
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Meaning of protected characteristic | ||
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3. (1) In this Act, “protected characteristic”, in relation to a person or a group of persons, means any one of the following, namely— | ||
(a) race, | ||
(b) colour, | ||
(c) nationality, | ||
(d) religion, | ||
(e) national or ethnic origin, | ||
(f) descent, | ||
(g) gender, | ||
(h) sex characteristics, | ||
(i) sexual orientation, or | ||
(j) disability. | ||
(2) In this Act, in relation to the protected characteristics— | ||
(a) references to “religion” include references to the absence of a religious conviction or belief, | ||
(b) references to “descent” include references to persons or groups of persons who descend from persons who could be identified by certain characteristics (such as race or colour), but not necessarily all of those characteristics still exist, | ||
(c) references to “national or ethnic origin” include references to membership of the Traveller community (within the meaning of section 2 (1) of the Equal Status Act 2000 ), | ||
(d) “gender” means the gender of a person or the gender which a person expresses as the person’s preferred gender or with which the person identifies and includes transgender and a gender other than those of male and female, | ||
(e) “sexual orientation” has the same meaning as it has in section 2 (1) of the Equal Status Act 2000 , | ||
(f) references to sex characteristics shall be construed as references to the physical and biological features of a person relating to sex, and | ||
(g) “disability” has the same meaning as it has in section 2 (1) of the Equal Status Act 2000 . |