Article 16 Protection from discrimination
Subject to subsections (4) and (5), no law shall make any provision which is discriminatory either of itself or in its effect.
Subject to subsections (4), (5) and (7), no person shall be treated in a discriminatory manner by any person acting by virtue of any written law or in the performance of the functions of any public office or any public authority.
In this section, the expression “discriminatory” means affording different treatment to different persons on any ground such as sex, sexual orientation, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth or other status.
Nothing in any law or done under its authority shall be held to contravene this section to the extent that it has an objective and reasonable justification and there is a reasonable proportion between the provision of law in question or, as the case may be, the thing done under it and the aim which that provision or thing done under it seeks to realise.
Subsection (1) shall not apply to any law so far as that law makes provision—
for the appropriation of revenues or other funds of Montserrat or for the imposition of taxation (including the levying of fees for the grant of licences);
with respect to the entry into or exclusion from Montserrat, or the employment or engaging in any business or profession within Montserrat, of persons who are not Montserratians;
for the application, in the case of persons of any such description of grounds as is mentioned in subsection (3) (or of persons connected with such persons) of the law with respect to adoption, marriage, divorce, burial, devolution of property on death or other like matters that is the personal law applicable to persons of that description; or
whereby persons of any such description of grounds as is mentioned in subsection (3) may be subjected to any disability or restriction or may be accorded any privilege or advantage which, having regard to its nature and to special circumstances pertaining to those persons or to persons of any other such description, is reasonably justifiable in a democratic society;
and subsection (2) shall not apply to anything which is expressly or by necessary implication authorised to be done by any such provision of law.
No person shall be treated in a discriminatory manner in respect of access to any place to which the general public has access.
Nothing in subsection (2) shall affect any discretion relating to the institution, conduct or discontinuance of civil or criminal proceedings in any court that is vested in any person by or under this Constitution.