C-249/96 Grant v South West Trains [1998] ECR I-621

• Plaintiff’s employer offered concession rates for train journeys for employees’ spouses or long term partners. However it refused to give these concessions to Plaintiff’s same-sex long term partner.

• ECJ held that clearly it couldn’t infringe directive 76/207, since that concerned equal treatment of men and women, and not sexual orientation. Same was true of article 141 of EC Treaty.

  • The law did not at that time view stable marriages between same-sex couples as equivalent to marriages between heterosexual couples. 

ECJ

• Although respect for the fundamental rights which form an integral part of the general principles of Community law is a condition of the legality of Community acts, those rights cannot in themselves have the effect of extending the scope of the Treaty provisions beyond the competences of the Community.

• It rejected the conceptualisation of ‘sex’ as including ‘sexual orientation’ as is considered to be the case in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.