Who should we accommodate? Opening the grounds for reasonable accommodation under the European Convention on Human Rights

The thesis examines who can and should benefit from the right to reasonable accommodation under the European Convention on Human Rights (“the Convention”). Reasonable accommodation is often presented as a concept characteristic for disability or religion. The thesis challenges this framing, arguing that it is an inherent requirement of the right to substantive equality for all. The ensuing doctrinal analysis demonstrates that the European Court of Human Rights (“the Court”) implicitly uses reasonable accommodation as such, covering a wide range of grounds, including gender and gender identity, race and ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or age. However, the Court’s covert approach makes the relevant standards untransparent and, at times, inconsistent. The thesis demonstrates how to make the Court’s approach to selecting the target group of reasonable accommodation more consistent. It relies on the Court’s two-tiered grounds doctrine that covers a wide range of grounds but offers specific protection to some. This approach is adjusted to reasonable accommodation, distinguishing two sets of grounds: open grounds for an unintended, constructed disadvantage linked with status; and suspect grounds, often defined by vulnerability. A wide range of people can thus demand to be reasonably accommodated as part of their right to equality under the Convention. However, the Court should review the claims of those complaining about the denial of reasonable accommodation on suspect grounds and vulnerability with more stringency.