The Associated Press
New York (AP) -- A Sikh who was forced from his police department job because he insisted on wearing a turban while writing tickets and directing traffic should be reinstated, a judge ruled.
The officer, Jasjit Singh Jaggi, filed a complaint last year with the city Commission on Human Rights, accusing New York Police Department officials of religious discrimination.
He claimed that he was forced to resign because he refused to shave his beard and stop wearing a turban, considered an article of faith in the Sikh religion.
Jaggi “proved by a preponderance of evidence that he was discriminated against based on his religious beliefs,” Administrative Law Judge Donna Merris wrote in a preliminary ruling.
Jaggi, 36, who has been working at a motel in Vermont, said on Thursday he was looking forward to returning to his NYPD job. He called the decision a “great victory for Sikhs.”
“It is our identity to have a turban and a beard,” he said.
Police said they still hoped to convince the human rights commission that every traffic officer should wear a white eight-point hat.
The “uniform requirement advances important public interests, including safety of traffic agents as well as the public,” an attorney for the city, Eamonn Foley, said in a statement.
The commission did not say when it would issue a final ruling.
The judge criticized the NYPD for alleging but failing to show that Jaggi’s request to wear a white turban with the department shield on the front would be a burdensome accommodation of his religious beliefs.