Howard M. Friedman (LexBlog France)

In Allouche v. France, (ECHR, April 11, 2024) (full text in French), the European Court of Human Rights in a Chamber Judgment awarded damages of 15,000 Euros plus costs and expenses to a Jewish woman for violation of her right to respect for her private life. As explained by the Court in an English language...

 As reported by AP, France’s Parliament yesterday gave final approval to a Constitutional amendment that guarantees abortion rights: The measure was approved in a 780-72 vote in the Palace of Versailles. Abortion enjoys wide support in France across most of the political spectrum, and has been legal since 1975…. Both houses of France’s parliament, the...

The Forward (Dec. 11) reports that a new controversy over the meaning of secularism is raging since last week in France: The scene of the figurative bonfire was, remarkably, the official home of the president, the Elysée Palace…. [Emmanuel] Macron was awarded the Lord Jacobovits Prize, an award … to honor individuals who have distinguished...

On Thursday, France’s Council of State upheld the government’s ban Muslim girls wearing the abaya at school.   France 24 explains: President Emmanuel Macron’s government announced last month it was banning the abaya in schools, saying it broke the rules on secularism in education that have already seen Muslim headscarves banned on the grounds that they...

In Sanchez v. France, (ECHR, May 15, 2023), the European Court of Human Rights by a vote of 13-4 in a Grand Chamber judgment upheld France’s conviction of a candidate for election to Parliament who was convicted of inciting violence against Muslims when he failed to promptly remove anti-Muslim postings by third parties placed on his...

In Zemmour v. France, (EDHR, Dec. 20, 2022) (full text of decision in French), the European Court of Human Rights upheld France’s conviction of a journalist for inciting discrimination and religious hatred against the French Muslim community through anti-Muslim remarks he made on a 2016 television talk show.  According to the Court’s English language press release...

On December 5, the Conference of Bishops of France in a lengthy press release (full text in French) announced the creation of a National Canonical Penal Court.  According to National Catholic Reporter: [The Bishops’ statement] said the 20-member court, approved by the Vatican in September, would be tasked with judging “canonical offenses committed by clergy...

In Loste v. France, (ECHR, Nov. 3, 2022) (full text in French) (Press Release summary in English), the European Court of Human Rights in a Chamber judgment held that France’s child welfare service violated Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights when it failed to assure that a Jehovah’s Witness foster family was respecting the...

In Bourton v. France, (ECHR, Oct. 13, 2022) (full text of decision in French), the European Court of Human Rights in a Chamber Judgment held that a French court’s imposition of a suspended one-month prison sentence on a 39-year feminist activist charged with “sexual exposure” violated her rights of freedom of expression under the European Convention...

France’s Constitutional Council last month in Union of Diocesan Associations of France and others  (Conseil constitutionnel, July 22, 2022) upheld the constitutionality of several provisions of law governing religious institutions in France. It upheld the requirement that a religious organization must register with a government official in order to enjoy benefits available specifically to a...

 CNN reports that on Tuesday, France’s highest administrative court, the Council of State, held that the city of Grenoble cannot permit Muslim women to wear the full-length “burkini” bathing suit in its municipal swimming pools. The court said that doing so would compromise principles of religious neutrality and “the equal treatment of users.” The court went...

France’s Court of Cassation, one of the country’s four courts of last resort, this week upheld a rule of the Lille bar association that provides: “the lawyer may not wear with the robe either decoration or sign ostensibly manifesting a religious, philosophical, community or political affiliation or opinion.”  One of the litigants was a law student...

As reported by CNN, France’s Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) yesterday filed its final report: Members of the Catholic clergy in France sexually abused an estimated 216,000 minors over the past seven decades, according to a damning report published Tuesday that said the Church had prioritized the protection of the institution over...

France 24 reports that France’s highest court, the Court of Cassation, ruled on Wednesday that a Muslim man who murdered Sarah Halimi, a Jewish woman, was not criminally responsible for the act.  The report says in part: Halimi, an Orthodox Jewish woman in her sixties, died in 2017 after being pushed out of the window of...

American Jewish Committee Paris yesterday released a new 35-page report on antisemitism in France (Full text of report). The report analyzes surveys conducted in October and November of 2019. AJC’s release summarizing the report says in part: Nearly three-quarters, 73%, of the French public, and 72% of Jews, consider antisemitism a problem that affects all...

In France on Thursday, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, the Archbishop of Lyon, was convicted of failing to report child abuse to authorities.  As reported by the New York Times, in 2014 and 2015 parishioners told the Archbishop of abuse of dozens of Boy Scouts that took place in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s by one of...

In France on Thursday, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, the Archbishop of Lyon, was convicted of failing to report child abuse to authorities.  As reported by the New York Times, in 2014 and 2015 parishioners told the Archbishop of abuse of dozens of Boy Scouts that took place in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s by one of...