Private employers in European Union member-states can now legally ban employees from wearing head scarves or other religious garb, the bloc’s highest court ruled on Tuesday. The European Court of Justice’s ruling comes at a time of creeping anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment across Europe, most notably in France, Germany, and the Netherlands.

Head scarves are not the only targeted religious ornaments; the ruling could affect Sikh men who wear turbans or Jews who wear yarmulkes, for instance. Applying only to the workplace, the ban is binding for EU member-states, as all ECJ rulings are. Some European politicians who are bracing for heated elections later this year welcomed the ruling. Francois Fillon, the scandal-plagued presidential candidate in France, called the ruling an “immense relief,” and said it would be “a factor in cohesion and social peace.”

France’s far-right candidate, Marine Le Pen, has built her campaign around anti-immigrant, and specifically anti-Muslim, policies. She is expected to advance to the second round of voting, which will take place on May 7. In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany party is seeking to supplant Chancellor Angela Merkel in an election in September, though the party has recently dipped in the polls. The party’s Berlin leader, Georg Pazderski, applauded the ECJ’s ruling, saying it “sends out the right signal, especially for Germany.”

The ruling was based on two separate cases brought to the court by France and Belgium. In the first case, Samira Achbita, who worked for a security company in Belgium, was fired when she refused to remove her head scarf while at work. The ECJ ruled that Achbita had not been discriminated against because her workplace’s ban of religious attire applied to all religions, not just Islam.

“An internal rule of an undertaking which prohibits the visible wearing of any political, philosophical or religious sign does not constitute direct discrimination,” the court said, adding that the rule “treats all employees to the undertaking in the same way, notably by requiring them, generally and without any differentiation, to dress neutrally.”

In the second case, Asthma Bougnaoui was fired after a customer of her France-based IT consultancy firm complained that her head scarf was “embarrassing.” The ECJ ruled that she had, unlike Achbita, been discriminated against, because a customer complaint does not justify the firing of an employee. But that does not mean an employer cannot have a policy that employees are forbidden to wear religious attire in the workplace. The ECJ ruling allows for such a policy, which many religious and civil rights groups worry could lead to discrimination, specifically against Muslim women.

“It will lead to Muslim women being discriminated in the workplace, but also Jewish men who wear kippas, Sikh men who wear turbans, people who wear crosses,” said Maryam H’madoun of the Open Society Justice Initiative. “It affects all of them, but disproportionately Muslim women.”   

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post European Court of Justice Rules That Employers Can Ban Religious Attire appeared first on Law Street.

He is running on a nationalist, anti-Islam platform. Yet his mother’s family is from Indonesia, the largest Muslim country on the planet. He fashions himself a political outsider. Yet he has spent his entire career in politics. Meet Geert Wilders: the 53-year-old paradox vying to be the next prime minister of the Netherlands.

Wilders has been called the “Dutch Donald Trump.” For one, his hair, dyed blonde and coiffed, is central to his image. But it goes a bit deeper: he has proposed banning the Quran. He would like to see all mosques in the Netherlands shuttered. And, like his populist peers in the rest of Europe, has promised a “Nexit” (a referendum vote for the Netherlands to exit the European Union) if he wins the March 15 election.

At a political rally three years ago, Wilders led an exchange that underscores his anti-Islam, and anti-immigrant views. “Do you want more or fewer Moroccans in this country?” he asked the crowd, which replied: “Fewer, fewer, fewer!” Wilders, then a member of parliament, smiled and said: “Well I’ll arrange for that then.”

There are a few qualities that distance Wilders from the popular perception of other far-right political candidates in Europe. He supports gay marriage. He supports drug legalization and legalized prostitution. And his supporters see him as a protector, not an opponent, of the Netherlands’ liberal ethos, unlike France’s Marine Le Pen and the nationalist candidates in Germany. In Wilders’s world, Islam is the enemy of liberal values, not of orthodox conservative values or values steeped in Christianity.

By most accounts, his extreme stance against Islam began in 2004. Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh made a film that was critical of Islam. Soon after its release, Van Gogh was killed by a Muslim extremist. This ignited millions of people to take to the streets in the name of free speech. Wilders, a member of parliament at the time, was a vocal opponent of Muslim immigration to the Netherlands. Dutch officials discovered plots to take his life, and Wilders has been living a reclusive lifestyle ever since.

He lives in a safe house. His office at the Dutch parliament is on a different floor than his fellow MPs, and is heavily guarded. He has rarely made public appearances in the weeks and months leading up to the March 15 election. And as befits a man often compared to Trump, Wilders uses Twitter to directly communicate with his followers.

His message is resonating with a large swath of Dutch voters; his Party for Freedom is leading most national polls. But the Dutch governing system is ruled by a coalition of parties–usually four or five–with a prime minister usually, but not always, coming from the party with the most seats in parliament. Other party leaders, including current Prime Minister Mark Rutte, have said they will not govern with Wilders at the helm. Whether or not he becomes the prime minister, Wilders has surely nudged the government to the right, and his message will influence the future leader.

During a recent interview, Wilders summed up his governing philosophy: “I’m a patriot, and I believe there’s a ‘Patriotic Spring’ going on in the world today, in the Western world,” he said. “Donald Trump did the job in America, and I hope that here in Europe, we will see a patriotic spring in Holland but also in Germany, France — many other countries where parties like mine are getting stronger every day.”

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Meet Geert Wilders, the “Dutch Donald Trump” appeared first on Law Street.