Mr and Mrs Bull refused to let a double-bedded room in their private hotel to Mr Hall and Mr Preddy, a couple in a civil partnership, because as Christians they believed that sexual activity should take place only within the context of (heterosexual) marriage. The Court was divided as to whether the discrimination complained of had been direct or indirect but was unanimous in dismissing the appeal.

Lady Hale, Lord Kerr and Lord Toulson held that the appellants' policy constituted direct discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation. In Black v Wilkinson [2013] 1 WLR 2490, a case on similar facts, Lord Dyson MR had concluded in the Court of Appeal that refusing a same-sex couple a double room was indirect discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation, since unmarried opposite-sex couples would also be denied accommodation. For Lady Hale, however, it made a difference that Mr Hall and Mr Preddy were civil partners, since civil partnership is ‘in almost every other respect … indistinguishable from the status of marriage in United Kingdom law … Like marriage, it is a status, in which some of the terms are prescribed by law, and which has consequences for people other than the couple themselves and for the state’. She could not see how discriminating between married couples and civil partners could be anything other than direct discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.

Both Lord Neuberger and Lord Hughes held that the appellants' policy constituted unjustified indirect discrimination. Lord Neuberger could not see why the fact that Mr Preddy and Mr Hall were civil partners altered Lady Hale's conclusion that the discrimination would have been indirect had the two not been in a civil partnership. Lord Hughes regarded civil partners as a subset of a wider class: the unmarried. There were two other subsets of the unmarried: a same-sex couple not in a civil partnership and an opposite-sex unmarried couple. The appellants treated all three subsets the same, and if their treatment of the first two groups was on the grounds that they were not married it was difficult to see how their treatment of civil partners could then be turned into less favourable treatment on grounds of sexual orientation. However, because marriage was not possible for same-sex couples, the appellants' practice amounted to unjustifiable indirect discrimination in the case of both same-sex subsets. [Frank Cranmer]