Religious dress in the European Courts - seeking equality or justifying discrimination against Muslim women?

The School of Law Research Seminar Series offers exciting insights into ongoing research projects within the law school and conducted by our external research partners. We often feature work from our three research centres (the Centre for American Legal Studies, the Centre for Human Rights, and the Centre for Science, Law and Policy).

Our work is often transdisciplinary, dealing with law's relationship with broadly defined social justice, policy-making, science and much more. Join us for invigorating discussion!

In this session, we hear from Dr Jessica Guth, BCU's new head of the School of Law. Jess is a legal academic with particular interests in legal education and pedagogy as well as in EU law and policy. Jess' research interests are in two distinct areas. The first is around gender and EU Law and, in particular, the impact gender has on the work of the Court of Justice of the EU. Some of this work has been published in a monograph by Routledge (joint with Dr Sanna Elfving). The second research area is legal education broadly conceived and Jess has published on pedagogy, the impact of changes to legal education and training and on academic identity.

In this session, Dr Guth will give the following presentation, followed by an interactive Q&A:

Abstract

The need to consider intersectional issues in order to offer better strategies to try and achieve substantive equality for Muslim women is painfully apparent in the Court of Justice of the EU’s (CJEU) decisions in Bougnaoui (C-188/15) and Achbita (C-157/15). These decisions fail to recognise that a seemingly neutral criterion or practice, which necessitates all employees to hide visible symbols of their faith (eg headscarves), is likely to have a more significant impact on specific minorities (i.e. Muslim women). Joined cases C-804/18 IX v WABE e.V and C-341/19 MH Müller Handels GmbH v MJallow afforded the CJEU another opportunity to consider its jurisprudence in this area and address the gaps and perhaps flaws evident in its early judgments. However, the Advocate-General’s opinion did not look promising for a more nuanced and intersectional understanding and arguably the judgment of the Court once again missed the point. This paper charts the history of anti-discrimination law in relation to religious dress at both CJEU and ECtHR level before examining in detail these latest two cases, the questions they leave unanswered and the problems they continue to perpetuate.

If you have any questions, contact Iyan Offor, the Research Seminar Series leader, at iyan.offor@bcu.ac.uk.