A year ago, Gabriel Attal was the new Minister of National Education and he placed the first school year under the seal of the ban on the abaya in schools. A forceful measure, disseminated among principals and teachers by means of a memorandum and explained to parents in a letter. Several unions and associations then challenged this measure before the Council of State, which successively rejected a “remitted freedom” on September 7, 2023, and a “remitted suspension” on the 25th of the same month.
A year has passed, Gabriel Attal became Prime Minister and then a simple MP and the abaya no longer makes headlines. The Council of State is still dealing with the three requests for annulment of the note of 31 August 2023 submitted respectively by Action Droits des Musulmans, Le Poing leva and La Voix lycéenne, and finally Sud Education. The three requests, although based on different means, were grouped together and examined in a joint hearing, on Monday evening, 9 September, by the contentious section.
In his presentation, the public rapporteur, Jean-François de Montgolfier, who acts as an independent prosecutor for the Council of State, recommended the rejection of the three requests. According to him, the requests for rejection revolve around three arguments: the incompetence of the minister to take such a measure, the ambivalent nature of the abaya and, finally, the existence of a higher legal standard, the European one, preventing the implementation of the ministerial note. He fired them one after another.
Although it does not explicitly mention the abaya, the 2004 law banning “flashy” religious clothing and symbols in schools applies, according to the public rapporteur, in the case of the abaya. The latter, like the qamis, also mentioned in the note of August 31, 2023, may be a traditional garment and not necessarily religious, but its way of wearing it in France identifies it with the Muslim religion. There can therefore be no ambiguity. In addition, a decision of the Council of State of December 5, 2007 already validates the prohibition of wearing the turban and the Sikh headscarf as religious clothing. The reasoning is the same for the abaya. The Minister of National Education is therefore competent to prohibit it, just as it has already done with the veil, the kippah, the large crosses or the turban in past circulars.
“A close link between the abaya and the veil”
Second category of arguments: the abaya is not a clearly identified or defined garment – traditional dress, cape, kimono, etc. – its prohibition would amount to discrimination, as it targets Muslim girls dressed in loose-fitting dresses and not other people who would be exempt from the ban. De Montgolfier says that in one year he has only seen one case of legal proceedings questioning the religious nature of the use of a supposed abaya, “without excluding possible difficulties in implementation [du règlement] found ».
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