A top court in France on Thursday upheld a new government decree barring children in public schools from wearing the abaya, a loosefitting, full-length robe worn by some Muslim women, in a blow to critics who had called the ban discriminatory and had filed an emergency petition to strike it down.
The Council of State, France’s top administrative court, which has jurisdiction over disputes concerning civil liberties, ruled that the ban was not a “serious and obviously illegal infringement of a fundamental freedom.”Wearing an abaya is part of a “logic of religious affirmation,” the court said in a statement, adding that the ban was therefore in line with a French law that “prohibits the wearing by pupils of signs or clothing ostensibly expressing religious affiliation, either in and of themselves, or because of the pupil’s behavior.”Since 2004, students have not been able to wear “ostentatious” symbols that have a clear religious meaning, like Catholic crosses, Jewish skullcaps or Muslim head scarves, in middle and high schools.
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