European Central: European Court of Justice Allows Employers To Ban Religious Symbols
Godong/robertharding
The highest court in the European Union, the European Court of Justice has ruled that religious symbols can be banned in the workplace. Employers can do this as long as they enforce the ban equally among all religions and have a genuine need on the part of the employer. An example of a genuine need would be an expectation of neutrality. Limited bans will not be allowed. An example would be if an employer attempted to ban only head coverings, this would not be allowed based on the ruling.
The case was brought before the court by two Muslim women in Germany who started wearing hijabs at work years after they were initially hired. One woman works at a location of the Mueller Pharmacy Chain while the other works for a daycare center. It is one thing to say that people may strongly push to keep religious symbols out of education and childcare facilities, but it raises the question of why a pharmacy needs to maintain neutrality and ban religious symbols for employees. Including in the United States, there has long been a push to keep schools’ secular in public schools, but why cannot employees wear any religious symbols in grocery stores? There is validity to the desire of keeping religion out of classrooms and academic discussions, but a cashier who has very limited time with a customer is not going to get into a religious debate.
The ban has received backlash from human rights organizations including Human Rights Watch which argues followers of some religions are impacted by the ruling more than others, even if all religious symbols are banned by an employer. Some key examples are Muslim women who wear a hijab, Jewish men who wear kippahs, or Sikh men who wear turbans. This is why some critics of the ruling may not take solace in the fact that no religious symbols are allowed if some religions have more visible symbols than others in the first place. This ruling may also force people to choose between continuing to work and following their religion. The concern is that while the initial idea to ban religious symbols is to help migrants integrate may actually cause religious people to become separated from the outside world. The irony is instead of helping “oppressed women”, employers and countries may be harming these women even further. People with more visible religious symbols will be forced to choose between continuing to work or following their religious convictions.
Many European countries have already banned face coverings and this ruling seems to support it as long as the ban applies to all religions. However, as has already been witnessed, besides having the potential to exclude women from the workforce, girls in France are already less likely to finish their education. Stanford researchers found that the gap between Muslim and Non-Muslim women who did not finish their secondary education doubled after the headscarves were banned in public schools 2004. Girls had to come to school without any head covering, transfer to a private school, participate in distant learning, or leave France if they are under the age of 16 and need to legally be in school. Hiding religious symbols seems to encourage students and faculty in public school to pretend that religious differences do not exist and continue to fester under the surface rather than learning how to respect each other.
Not all member states in The European Union have the same approach. In comparison, the Austrian Constitutional Court ruled that girls aged up to 10 years old cannot be prevented from wearing head scarves. If they are, it would be considered discriminatory. This ruling for minor girls was not to protect only girls 10 years or younger but was the result of an attempt to ban girls 10 years or younger from being able to wear headscarves in school in 2018. This was a proposal from Chancellor Kurz, a conservative who was allegedly concerned with preventing a parallel society from developing in Austria and protect girls from political Islam. As critics including Muslim groups in Austria have pointed out, it is not certain how many young girls that fall in this age range even wear headscarves in Austria. Chancellor Kurz has failed to produce statistics showing how many young Muslim girls are even allegedly forced to wear head coverings. It is important to point out that the previous government before Kurz assumed the chancellorship passed a law banning full-face coverings in public, but coverings such as hijab that do not cover the face are permitted.
It is yet to be seen how other member states will react to this ruling and if governments will use the ruling from the European Court of Justice as a way to justify a crackdown on religious symbols when in reality it will be clear that religious symbols from some religions may be more difficult for observers to not choose to wear than others. A Christian can tuck a cross in their shirt, but a Muslim woman, Sikh man, or a Jewish man cannot do the same with a hijab, turban, or kippah. What is clear is that integration between migrants and native populations may be at a huge risk if observers have to choose to withdraw from the workforce if a large percentage of employers start to ban religious symbols. In reality, it seems that rather instead of accepting various religions and practices there is a push to pretend as if religion differences do not exist.
