Prince George's County, USA - Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler has issued a legal opinion allowing security officers to require Muslim women and other people who cover their faces for religious reasons to remove their veils when entering courthouses. Gansler said law enforcement officers could require removing the cloth as long as they enforce a "neutral and generally applicable" standard to all groups.
The guidance had been sought by the Prince George's County sheriff's office and was not related to a specific incident. Security officers said they needed to be able to identify people who enter the courthouse. Gansler's opinion advises that officers take women to be screened in a private area with female officers present and allows the women to wear their veils after being checked.
The opinion has drawn concern from civil liberties groups, including the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, which said that even if the policy is applied to all people, it was designed for Muslims and so could be discriminatory.
Sgt. Mario Ellis, a spokesman for the sheriff's office, said yesterday that the county's diverse religions and population of immigrants have prompted a "proactive" interest in a court policy. Muslim women enter county courthouses from time to time, he said, and have consented to removing their hijab or niqab. The public is not required to present identification before going through metal detectors, he said. "But you've got to be able to see a face" in case someone who enters a courthouse is a witness or victim of a crime or commits one.
"We're not asking you to walk around all day without the veil," Ellis said.
Gansler's seven-page opinion, issued last week and reported in the Baltimore Sun yesterday, advises court officers to set aside a private area so women can be screened out of view of the public or a man. It recommends that female court officers conduct the search, just as a man wearing a face covering should be searched by a male officer. "We have plenty of female officers in the courthouse, Ellis said.
But civil liberties groups remain concerned.
"There are other ways of screening people," said Mary Rose Oakar, president of the District-based American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. She suggested that court officers use the security wand in place at airports. She called the practice of covering a Muslim's woman's face "a really important part of their makeup that cannot be demeaned" by removing the veil even briefly. "The idea of modesty is very important."
David Rocah, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, said Muslims are the only religious group affected by the opinion -- nuns, for example, wear habits that do not hide their faces.
"On its face, it's a rule of general applicability, but in practice it's not," Rocah said. He also questioned whether the women's right to freedom of expression would be denied by having to remove their face covering.
"Many Muslim women would tell you that they wear the niqab not just because they believe it's a religious requirement, but because it proclaims their identity as Muslim women," he said.
A number of states have passed laws that require government officials to show that they have a compelling interest in enforcing a law that conflicts with a religious practice. Maryland is not one of them.
Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court have addressed the issue. In a 1990 case, the Supreme Court ruled that Oregon could deny employment to American Indians who used peyote for sacramental purposes. Congress, in response, passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which sought to bring back a looser standard in granting religious exemptions. But in 1997, the court ruled that Congress had exceeded its authority, leading some states to pass laws like the federal one.