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Commerzbank wins appeal in London sex discrimination case

Commerzbank AG has won the right to a new hearing in a London lawsuit where an employee successfully claimed she faced gender and maternity discrimination.

Jagruti Rajput, a senior compliance officer at the bank’s London branch, last year won a court ruling that the bank had discriminated against her. A higher court has now ruled that the case can be re-heard before a fresh tribunal because of failings by the court that ruled in her favor.

Questions about the extent to which decision-makers at the bank held, and acted on, stereotypes in the workplace will play a central role in any fresh hearing. It would take place at a time when women are discussing sexual discrimination in the wake of the #MeToo movement.

The lower court had found that bank decision makers “had acted on the basis of certain stereotypical assumptions about women and about women taking maternity leave,” judge Michael Soole said in his ruling Thursday. The bank and its witnesses should’ve been given an opportunity to respond to this suggestion, and the lower court’s failure to do this was unfair, he said.

The lower court’s judgment in Rajput’s case described a series of ways in which women can face discrimination at work, saying “traits that are considered as positives in men may be seen as negative when they are exhibited by women”.

Commerzbank said it has “always maintained that neither the bank nor its managers discriminated against Ms. Rajput on the basis of her gender”.

An attorney for Rajput didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Diminishing Role

Rajput claimed the bank discriminated against her by failing to fairly consider her for a promotion, and by taking advantage of her absence on maternity leave to pass “significant elements” of her role to a colleague, then diminishing her role when she returned.

The new ruling is a blow to Rajput, whose earlier victory had led her to ask the bank to take action to train and mentor her for a future promotion.

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