Court: European Union government offices may prohibit religious symbols

The European Union’s Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday that the government workplaces in the EU can prohibit employees from wearing religious symbols such as Islamic headscarves.

According to the court, a rule like this can be enforced in order to put in place an entirely neutral administrative environment.

The judgment stemmed from a complaint filed by a worker in a Belgian local government office who challenged a restriction on her wearing an Islamic headscarf, claiming that it violated her religious freedom and discriminated against her.

The Luxembourg-based court ruled that the ban of any sign revealing philosophical or religious beliefs… is not discriminatory if it is applied in a general and indiscriminate manner to all of that administration’s staff and is limited to what is strictly necessary.

The ruling, which is applicable to public sector offices throughout the EU, backs up previous European Union court decisions that ruled such restrictions to be legitimate in private sector workplaces.

It stated that national courts should decide whether such prohibitions are applicable and that public offices could adopt regulations limiting such bans to public-facing workers, or decide to authorize the wearing of visible religious or philosophical markers of belief.

“Each Member State, and any infra-State body within the framework of its competencies, has a margin of discretion in designing the neutrality of the public service which it intends to promote in the workplace, depending on its own context”, the statement reads.

“However, that objective must be pursued in a consistent and systematic manner, and the measures adopted to achieve it must be limited to what is strictly necessary”, the statement added.

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