On September 18, 2018, a Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights ruled in Lachiri v. Belgium that there had been a violation of Article 9 (freedom of thought, conscience and religion) of the European Convention on Human Rights when a woman was excluded from a courtroom after refusing to remove her hijab. As noted in the press release, the Court found that banning the woman, who was not a state representative, “had amounted to a ‘restriction’ on the exercise of her right to manifest her religion.” While the Court held that the restriction pursued the legitimate aim of “protecting public order,” the Court determined that the woman’s conduct in the courtroom was respectful and not a threat to the proceedings, and consequently, “the need for the restriction in question had not been established and that the infringement of Mrs Lachiri’s right to freedom to manifest her religion was not justified in a democratic society.”