Public schools in France have been turning away students for breaking a new national ban on the abaya, a long, robe-like garment often worn by Muslim women, as a rights group filed an appeal against the prohibition,
CNN reports.
A total of 67 girls returned home rather than remove their abayas, Education Minister Gabriel Attal told CNN affiliate BFMTV on Tuesday.
Across the country a total of 298 pupils arrived at school wearing abayas, but a “large majority” agreed to remove them, said Attal, who added that the new rule had been followed “without any major difficulty to report” as the country’s schools began the new academic year on Monday.
Attal announced the ban on abayas in schools on Sunday, but by Tuesday the State Council, France’s highest court for complaints against state authorities, had heard an appeal from the Action Droits Des Musulmans (ADM) group.
The group’s lawyer, Vincent Brengarth, told journalists before the hearing that the ban is “not based on any legal text.”
In a separate interview with CNN affiliate BFMTV on Tuesday evening, Brengarth said the ban has been imposed in an “arbitrary” manner as it contains no legal definition of what an abaya looks like. Abayas have also never been formally classified as religious items, according to Brengarth.
“The main argument is that the abaya is not defined by the executive government and the executive power. This is a ban which has absolutely no justification,” Brengarth added.
ADM is arguing that the ban infringes on “fundamental rights,” such as the right to personal liberty.
France’s administrative law requires a decision on the appeal to be handed down by the State Council within 48 hours of the hearing, which ended on Tuesday.
The ban has its legal foundation in a law passed in 2004 banning the wearing of “conspicuous” religious symbols in schools.
