OP v Commune d’Ans: Another Step in the Wrong Direction for Headscarf-Wearing Women

Erica HowardEmerita

Industrial Law Journal, 2024, vol. 53, issue 2, 305-320

Abstract: This article analyses and criticises the latest Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) case concerning the wearing of Muslim headscarves at work. OP was refused permission to wear a Muslim headscarf at work because her employer, a public authority, had a policy of exclusive neutrality, prohibiting employees from wearing any form of religious clothing or symbols. The CJEU judgment limits the employment opportunities of Muslim women who want to wear headscarves for religious reasons and allows member states and infra-state bodies a margin of discretion to decide whether to ban religious clothing and symbols for all employees, only for employees who come into contact with service users or not to ban such items at all; and, it ignores any possibility of the presence of gender, race or multiple discrimination. Prohibitions on religious clothing and symbols affect especially Muslim women, who are often from a non-European background and thus could amount to gender discrimination, race discrimination and to discrimination on a combination of religion or belief, gender and racial or ethnic origin.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/indlaw/dwae008 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:indlaw:v:53:y:2024:i:2:p:305-320.

Access Statistics for this article

Industrial Law Journal is currently edited by Professor Simon Deakin

More articles in Industrial Law Journal from Industrial Law Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().