Excerpt:
When a 24-year-old French woman took her government to the European Court of Human Rights in opposition to France's ban on full-face veils, the court upheld the French law.
The woman, of Pakistani origin, had argued that the ban on wearing the veil in public violated her freedom of religion and expression, and gave rise to "discrimination based on gender, religion and ethnic origin, to the detriment of women who wear the full-face veil".
The European Court's Grand Chamber however had declared that there had been no violation of Articles 8, 9 and 14 and, among others, the European judges took into account France's argument that the face "played a significant role in social interaction".