France’s highest administrative court has endorsed a police decision banning an organisation with far-right links from offering only pork soup meal to the homeless as it meant to exclude poor Muslims and Jews who do not eat swine.
The court’s ruling, reported on January 6, said the ban did not constitute an attack on freedom of expression. Police banned the soup kitchen last month, arguing the handouts discriminated against Jews and Muslims who do not eat pork on religious grounds.
But the ban was overturned by an administrative court earlier last week, which triggered the French Interior Ministry to appeal against that ruling to the Council of State, the country’s highest administrative court.
Paris Mayor, a staunch campaigner against the charity’ pork meal, welcomed the new verdict. “This decision clearly establishes the discriminatory dimension of such an operation, from which people of Jewish or Muslim faith are de facto excluded,” Delanoe said in a statement.