31 Judgment No. CCZ 2/18 Constitutional Application No. CCZ 86/15 The Legislature was free to classify employers who terminated employees’ contracts on notice. It was free to choose to impose the financial obligation on them. The Legislature was also free to classify employees whose contracts were terminated on notice and grant them the benefit of compensation for loss of employment. The Legislature reacted to the direct adverse impact on the economic lives of employees whose contracts were terminated on notice at the initiative of employers who exercised their right to terminate the contracts of employment on notice. The applicants, who belong to a class of persons obliged to pay minimum retrenchment packages, cannot allege unequal protection of the law against employees who are in a different class from theirs. The employees whose contracts were terminated on notice are not comparable to employers who terminated their contracts on notice for the purpose of the legislation retrospectively applied to the parties. The employer cannot in the circumstances claim equality with the employee whose employment he or she or it terminated on notice. Although the applicants suffered a disadvantage by having the financial obligation imposed on them retrospectively, they did not share relevant characteristics with the employees whose contracts they terminated on notice for the purposes of the legislation. The applicants were not similarly situated as the employees whose contracts they terminated on notice for the purposes of the retrospective imposition of the financial obligation to pay the employees whose contracts were terminated the minimum retrenchment package. Equality means sameness in treatment of people who are similarly situated or placed. Only when people in a similar circumstance are treated