There was an outcry in France when an appeal court sided with a woman who was fired by a private crèche for wearing a headscarf at work. Interior minister Manuel Valls says he now favours a new law to extend the ban on wearing religious symbols, while opponents argue that new measures simply risk stigmatising French Muslims still further. As Carine Fouteau reports, it looks as if the government has come on the side of the interior minister and is preparing new legislation.
In a television interview last month, President François Hollande made a point of condemning the undermining of judges by politicians. But this does not seem to apply to those who criticise legal rulings, such as interior minister Manuel Valls, who recently expressed his “regret” over a ruling by the Cour de Cassation, France's highest court of appeal, that a woman was wrongfully dismissed from the Baby-Loup private nursery for refusing to remove her Islamic headscarf.
