The Court of Appeal of Versailles canceled Thursday the dismissal in 2009 of an engineer who refused to withdraw her Islamic veil at the request of her employers.

After a long process punctuated by several judgments, the Court of Appeal of Versailles delivered this Thursday the final decision in a case that began ten years ago and sought to answer of wearing the Islamic veil in a private enterprise.

Asma Bougnaoui was an IT engineer at Micropole, a computer consulting company based in Levallois. She was fired a year after she was hired in 2009.

Groupama, a client she was visiting on missions, had complained that she was wearing an Islamic veil and that it was bothering some of her associates.

The judicial process has been long. The industrial tribunal and then the Paris Court of Appeal had supported the company and considered that the dismissal was based on "a real and serious cause".

Asma Bougnaoui had then appealed in cassation. The highest French court, prudent, had sought the opinion of the Court of Justice of the European Union. 

The court said Asma Bougnaoui had the right to wear the Islamic veil at work, and there were not any regulations or laws that forbade her from doing so in the private sector.

Despite the decision coming 10 years late, the court also annulled the dismissal and ordered the computer consulting company Micropole to pay her 23,000 euros in back-pay and damages.

ILKHA