On March 14, 2017, the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in Achbita v. G4S Secure Solutions NV [3] and Bougnaoui v. Micropole SA [4] that internal work regulations that prohibit visibly wearing political, philosophical or religious signs do not amount to direct discrimination. According to the press release [5], in Achbita, Samira Achbita was fired from her position as a receptionist for her refusal to stop wearing an Islamic headscarf at a company with regulations that prohibited employees “from wearing any visible signs of their political, philosophical or religious beliefs and/or from engaging in any observance of such beliefs.” The Court found that the regulations applied to all belief systems equally and consequently did “not introduce a difference of treatment that is directly based on religion or belief” for purposes of the EU directive [6] on equal treatment in employment and occupation. The Court also stated that a national court may find the regulation is indirectly discriminatory if it nevertheless results in a particular religion being put at a specific disadvantage, but “such a difference of treatment would not amount to indirect discrimination if it was justified by a legitimate aim and if the means of achieving that aim were appropriate and necessary.”

In Bougnaoui, a French company fired Asma Bougnaoui when she refused their request to stop wearing an Islamic headscarf after a customer complained about it. Here, the question sent from the French Court of Cassation was whether a customer’s wish to not have services provided by someone wearing an Islamic headscarf “may be considered a ‘genuine and determining occupational requirement’ within the meaning of the directive.” The Court noted that “that it is only in very limited circumstances that a characteristic related, in particular, to religion may constitute a genuine and determining occupational requirement” and held “that the willingness of an employer to take account of the wishes of a customer no longer to have the services of that employer provided by a worker wearing an Islamic headscarf cannot be considered a genuine and determining occupational requirement within the meaning of the directive.”