BRUSSELS
\nGovernment offices in the EU can ban employees wearing religious symbols such as Islamic headscarves, even when they do not have contact with the public, the Court of Justice of the EU ruled on Tuesday.
\nSuch a rule can be imposed \u201cin order to put in place an entirely neutral administrative environment,\u201d the court said.
\nThe judgement derived from a case lodged by a worker in a Belgian local government office who challenged a ban on her wearing an Islamic headscarf, feeling that it infringed on her freedom of religion and she was being discriminated against.
\nThe Luxembourg-based court said a prohibition \u201cof any sign revealing philosophical or religious beliefs\u2026 is not discriminatory if it is applied in a general and indiscriminate manner to all of that administration\u2019s staff and is limited to what is strictly necessary\u201d.
\nThe ruling \u2014 valid for public sector offices across the EU \u2014 backs up previous EU court judgments that found such bans can be legal in private sector workplaces.
\nIt said national courts should decide the applicability of such prohibitions, and that public offices could also have policies limiting such bans to public-facing workers, or decide to authorise the wearing of visible religious or philosophical signs of belief.
\n\u201cEach Member State, and any infra-State body within the framework of its competences, 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,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BRUSSELS Government offices in the EU can ban employees wearing religious symbols such as Islamic headscarves, even when they do not have contact with the public, the Court of Justice of the EU ruled on Tuesday. Such a rule can be imposed \u201cin order to put in place an entirely neutral administrative environment,\u201d the court […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371232,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-371218","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n