If you thought the American Civil Liberties Union had ever reached the depths of litigious extremism, consider what this group is up to in Orlando, Fla. The Associated Press reports:
Florida’s refusal to issue a driver’s license to a Muslim woman unless she is photographed without her veil violates her religious rights, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer argued in court today.
The requirement by the state Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles is a burden on the woman, Saltaana Freeman, a 35-year-old convert to Islam whose religious beliefs require her to keep her head and face covered out of modesty, the lawyer, Howard Marks, said.
“This is about religious liberty,” Mr. Marks said as the trial opened in Ms. Freeman’s nonjury lawsuit against the state. “It’s about whether this country is going to have religious diversity. Allowing the state to chip away at religious liberties is not a path we want to go down.”
We wonder if Marks also believes that the Ku Klux Klan has a right to police and National Guard protection if –looking like Saltaana Freeman – they wish to demonstrate by marching with flaming crosses through Harlem on Saturday night.
This is hardly an irrelevant question since the same American Criminal Liberties Union defended the alleged right of the American Nazis to conduct a parade through Skokie, Ill., which had many residents who were survivors of Nazi concentration camps.
Assistant Attorney General Jason Vail argued that having an easily identifiable photo on a driver’s license was a matter of public safety because the photos are used during traffic stops, in financial transactions and to prevent identity fraud. Mr. Vail said there were limits to the religious liberties extended in the Florida Constitution if public safety was at stake.
“It’s the primary method of identification in Florida and the nation,” Vail said of the driver’s license. “I don’t think there can be any doubt there is a public safety interest.”
Judge Janet C. Thorpe must decide whether taking the photo would violate Freeman’s religious beliefs and if the state has a compelling interest in not allowing her to obtain a license with her covered face in a photograph.
In February 2001, Freeman obtained a Florida driver’s license that had a photograph of her face covered in a veil, but she received a letter from the state nine months later warning that it would revoke her license unless she returned for a photograph with her face uncovered.
Freeman refused and sued for the right to get a driver’s license with a photograph showing her face covered.
Her lawyers argued that state officials did not care that she wore a veil in the photograph until after the Sept. 11 attacks, an accusation that lawyers for the state denied.
It can be wondered if western Canada’s religious sect, the Doukhobors – who regularly staged protests by parading through city streets in the nude – would be regarded as denied their rights if the authorities ordered them to either clothe themselves, or go home or go to jail.
What can also be wondered is why Judge Thorpe did not immediately throw this case out of court. In 1999, Freeman, who was born Sendra Keller, pleaded guilty to felony aggravated battery – and was sentenced to 18 months probation – for her 1997 battering of a foster child.
