Equality ombudsman case 2009/103 of 30 November 2010
The Equality Ombudsman established that the general prohibition to wear the niqab at school amounts to indirect discrimination on grounds of ethnic origin or religion, unless it is objectively justified by, for instance, safety regulations for chemical experiments which require specific clothing. The case arose when a 24 year old ethnic Swede who had converted to Islam was not allowed to follow a training program to obtain a diploma as pre-school teachers (barnskötare) for she was wearing a niqab. The school alleged that the niqab prevented the teacher from seeing the student’s face hence rendered it default to teach. In the present case, the Ombudsman found that there were less intrusive measures to solve the pedagogical issue at stake. In fact, the student and the school later agreed that she could sit in the front row of the classroom without her niqab so that male students behind her could not see her face.
