Description
One of the more complicated religious liberty questions is whether or not public schoolteachers can legally wear religious garb while in the public classroom. As Dr. Nathan C. Walker demonstrates, legal issue spans 125 years in America, where 22 states banned teachers from wearing “any dress, mark, emblem or insignia indicating the fact that such teacher is a member or adherent of any religious order, sect or denomination” (Pennsylvania’s ban enacted in 1895, still in effect in 2021). Walker details how this trend spans the globe. Rather than target Catholic nuns from teaching in public schools, as done in the United States, European countries have been permitting Christians to wear religious symbols while denying Muslims, the new suspect minority of the day. From local laws to countries’ highest courts to regional human rights bodies to the United Nations, legal bans on religious garb remains a pervasive trend that disproportionally harms women and religious minorities.
