Landmark as gay couples win equal rights on tenancy

Homosexual couples were granted the right yesterday to be treated as husband and wife in tenancy agreements in a landmark judgment for gays under the Human Rights Act.

The Court of Appeal ruling opened the door for same-sex couples to claim equal rights to pensions, social security payments, inheritances and housing benefits, lawyers said last night.

The legal challenge centred on a relationship between Juan Mendoza and his partner, Hugh Wallwyn-James, who shared a London flat for 19 years. Mr Wallwyn-James died from cancer last year and the landlord served notice of his intention to repossess the couple's property. Because Mr Mendoza was not married to his partner he had limited protection from eviction under the Rent Act.

But the three judges ruled that under the terms of the legislation the words "as his or her wife or husband" should also apply to homosexual couples.

Lord Justice Buxton said that sexual orientation was now clearly recognised as an "impermissible ground of discrimination.

"As far as protection for the family is concerned it is quite unclear how heterosexual family life (which includes unmarried partnerships) is promoted by handicapping persons who are constitutionally unable to enter into family relationship so defined ... Parliament having swallowed the camel of including unmarried partners within the protection given to married couples it is not for the Court to strain at the gnat of including such partners who are of the same sex as each other."

Lord Justice Buxton rejected the argument that the principle of deference to the will of Parliament assisted in this case.

"I have no hesitation in saying that issues of discrimination, which it is conceded we are concerned with in this case, do have high constitutional importance and are issues that the courts should not shrink from. In such cases deference has only a minor role to play."

The court therefore had to decide whether legislation such as the Rent Acts were not merely reasonable and proportionate, but also "logically explicable as forwarding that policy".

Lawyers involved in the case said the three Court of Appeal judges had for the first time used the Human Rights Act 1998 to rewrite previous legislation to embrace rights outlawing discrimination.

The ruling would mean that many claims by homosexuals involving inheritance, property and family matters would have to be revisited by the courts, the lawyers said.

Russell Conway, a solicitor representing Mr Mendoza, said: "This is a sensational judgment because the Court of Appeal has put itself above Parliament and rewritten an Act. This is exactly what the Human Rights Act was designed to do."

Angela Mason, executive director of Stonewall, the lobby group for lesbian and gay rights, said: "The Court of Appeal has ruled that it is discriminatory to differentiate between straight couples living together as husband and wife and gay partners. This judgment will affect many other areas of the law including inheritance, fatal accidents, pensions, social security and housing benefit"

The case builds on a 1999 House of Lords judgment, which established that a homosexual couple in a stable relationship could be defined as a family but did not go as far as to say they had the same rights as a husband and wife.