Free Speech in Europe Isn't What Americans Think

European employers have been told they may ban the hijab provided they ban other visible signs of political, philosophical or religious beliefs, a form of neutrality that wouldn’t wash in U.S. employment law. At the same time, Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. face 50 million euro fines for failing to regulate hate speech to the satisfaction of German authorities, another legal impossibility in the U.S. where the First Amendment protects even hate speech. The two cases show how deep the divergence is between liberal American ideas about freedom of speech and religion and European conceptions of equality.

The hijab case decided by the European Court of Justice was anticipated after a single judge of the court issued an advisory opinion last summer allowing a private Belgian firm to prohibit a female receptionist from wearing a hijab on the ground that the firm had an unwritten (!) rule that disallowed employees from visible displays of their beliefs. The new decision followed roughly the lines of that advisory opinion.