THE political fallout after the murder of Henry Nowak (News, 5 June) has led me to question whether a merely formal approach to equality is adequate for justice, and whether the Equality Act 2010 now needs revisiting, so that, while equality remains the foundation, equity becomes the sharper test of whether justice is delivered in practice.

Formal equality asks whether the same rules are being applied to everyone. That question matters, but it is not enough. Institutions do not act in a vacuum. They make decisions under pressure, in fear, and with bias, reputational anxiety, and competing accounts of vulnerability and risk. In such moments, the deeper question is not only whether a rule has been applied evenly, but whether the human reality before the institution has been properly seen.

At the scene, the first question should not have been “Which protected category, allegation, or institutional risk must be managed first?” It should have been more basic and urgent: Who is in immediate danger? Who needs protection now? Who is most vulnerable in this moment? Who has power, who lacks it, and whose voice is being missed or disbelieved?

This is why the difference between equality and equity is categorical, not merely semantic. Equality is a claim about status: it declares that every person has the same worth and must receive the same legal regard. Equity is a demand upon practice: it asks what must change so that equal worth is recognised and protected under unequal conditions. Equality establishes the principle. Equity tests whether that principle is being enacted. Equality says that no one should be excluded from justice. Equity asks whether anyone is still being left outside the door.

THE Equality Act 2010 remains hugely significant. It brought under one roof anti-discrimination law, providing protection from unfair treatment on grounds such as race, disability, sex, religion or belief, sexual orientation, age, and other protected characteristics. It also permits limited “positive action” where proportionate steps are needed to address disadvantage, different needs, or under-representation. Government guidance is clear that the sole purpose of positive action is to remove barriers and enable equality of opportunity: it is not a licence for automatic preference or the abandonment of fair treatment.

But the political fallout after Henry Nowak’s murder exposes the limits of equality law in its current form: it cannot, by itself, deliver justice in practice. Equality too easily becomes bureaucratic, defensive, and category-led. It trains institutions to ask “Have we treated the categories correctly?” rather than “Have we responded justly to the person in front of us?” In this case, the person in front of the police was a dying young man. Whatever allegations had been made, the first duty was surely the preservation of life and human dignity, and truthful attention to embodied vulnerability.

A greater emphasis on equity would not mean abandoning equality before the law: it would mean deepening it. Equality would remain the foundational principle; equity would become the test of whether justice was actually being delivered.

Such a sharpening of the Equality Act would ask institutions to do more than avoid direct discrimination: it would require them to identify unequal risk, unequal power, unequal access to credibility, unequal vulnerability, and unequal outcomes. It would require public bodies to show not merely that they have a policy, but that their practice protects those most exposed to harm.

In policing, that would mean that anti-racism, disability awareness, safeguarding, trauma-informed practice, and emergency response must never become competing duties. They must be integrated around the primary question: What does justice demand in this particular human moment?

An equitable response should not collapse into the idea that justice simply means treating everyone identically. Neither should it say “Ignore race, disability, sex, class, religion, sexuality, or history.” That would return us to the fiction that everyone meets the State on equal terms. They do not. But neither should equity mean treating allegations, identities, or institutional anxieties as more important than immediate human need.

The theological and moral point is this: equality can become abstract; equity insists that justice remain incarnate. Equality counts categories; equity makes us attend to flesh, breath, fear, wounds, power, and urgency. Equality says, “The same rule applies to all.” Equity asks, “What must be done so that each person is actually protected, heard, and able to live?”

SO, MY argument for revisiting the Equality Act is not that equality has failed because it cared too much about marginalised groups. It is that equality fails when it becomes too thin, too procedural, too anxious, and too detached from lived reality. A renewed emphasis on equity would preserve the best of equality law while moving beyond compliance towards justice: not identical treatment, but truthful treatment; not box-ticking, but protection; not institutional self-defence, but human dignity.

Henry Nowak’s murder should never have been used to divide communities, but it should force a moral and theological reckoning. A just society cannot be satisfied when a dying person is treated first as a problem to be managed rather than a life to be saved. That is why the future cannot simply be equality as sameness. It must surely be equity as justice made real.

The Revd Timothy Goode is Canon for Congregational Discipleship and Nurture at York Minster.