[JURIST] The British Supreme Court [official website] ruled [judgment, PDF; press summary, PDF] Wednesday that a Jewish school discriminated against a boy by denying him admission because he was not "ethnically Jewish." The London secondary school, JFS [school website], denied admission to the boy, known as M, because his mother is Jewish by conversion, not by birth. The case turned on whether the school's policy was based on religion, which would be permissible, or based on race or ethnicity, which would be considered discriminatory. The five justices in the majority found the policy to be direct discrimination:

one thing is clear about the matrilineal test; it is a test of ethnic origin. By definition, discrimination that is based upon that test is discrimination on racial grounds under the Act.