EU court rules firms can ban headscarves at work

Ruling applies to all religious garb, not just for Muslims.

The European Union’s highest court waded into the politically explosive issue of public expressions of Muslim identity on Tuesday, finding that private employers can ban female workers from wearing headscarves on the job.

In its ruling, the European Court of Justice found that company regulations banning “the visible wearing of any political, philosophical or religious sign” did not constitute direct discrimination — so long as such prohibitions applied to religious garb from all faiths, a requirement that legal experts say could also encompass a Sikh turban and a Jewish skullcap, among other religious symbols.

“It is a very bold step,” said Camino Mortera-Martinez, a research fellow at the Center for European Reform in Brussels, describing the ruling as a landmark decision, if also a political and pragmatic one. “Recently we have seen the court being much more attentive to the political winds rather than being so legalistic, because of the recognition that the EU is at risk of collapse.”

She characterized the ruling as further evidence that the European court has been pivoting after years of rulings that favored the rights of minorities. This month, the court ruled that EU member states were not obliged to issue visas to people who planned to seek asylum in their countries, even if they were vulnerable to inhuman treatment or torture.

Few issues are more politically fraught in Europe than the issue of the rights of observant Muslim women to cover their faces and bodies. Last summer, for instance, a few French municipalities generated global headlines — and outrage — when Muslim women were prohibited from swimming in the sea while wearing a full-body covering known as the burkini.

Several countries — including France, Belgium, Austria and the Netherlands — have either passed laws that led to bans on full face-covering veils in public, or are considering legislation that would do so. Those laws, however, apply to public and government spaces.

The ruling on Tuesday, which experts said was the first time the court had issued a ruling on women wearing headscarves while on the job, applies only to the workplace and provides a minimum legal standard that member states must meet.

The European Court of Justice, based in Luxembourg, interprets the law for the 28-nation European Union, and its decisions are binding for member states. Its ruling on Tuesday followed advisory opinions in two distinct cases before the court.

In a case in May, Juliane Kokott, an advocate general with the court, issued an opinion saying that a company could prohibit a Muslim employee from wearing a headscarf, provided that the policy applied to attire for all religions and did not single out Islam.

That opinion came after a complaint by Samira Achbita, a Muslim woman in Belgium, who was fired as a receptionist for the international security services company G4S after she insisted that she be allowed to wear a headscarf at work.

THOMAS PADILLA / ASSOCIATED PRESS 2016 Women stand outside the Conseil d’Etat, France’s top administrative court, in August when the court suspended a ban by the city of Nice on burkinis, body-concealing swimsuits favored by some Muslim women.