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May
30, 2003, 9:45 a.m.
Veil of Litigation
A Muslim woman
fights the DMV.
By Eric Peters
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of us like the snapshot the DMV takes for our driver's license. It's rarely
a flattering portrait — especially after a few hours of waiting in
a DMV conga line. But bad hair day or not, when a cop pulls us over, he'll
be able to match the face behind the wheel with face on the license that's
handed to him. That's sort of the whole point of having an I.D. Otherwise,
it could be anybody.
But if 35-year-old
Sultanna Freeman wins her court battle with the state of Florida, she'll
be able to get around the face-portrait requirement — at least partially.
She says her Muslim beliefs forbid her being photographed without her veil
— which leaves only her eyes exposed. Freeman — backed by the
increasingly delusional American Civil Liberties Union — is challenging
the right of Florida to require that she allow her face to be photographed,
sans veil, for her driver's license — just like everyone else.
"This is about
religious liberty," Howard Marks of the ACLU told the Associated
Press. "It's about whether this country is going to have religious
diversity." Florida Assistant Attorney General Jason Vail countered
— much more sensibly — that public-safety issues trump the religious-expression
argument, observing that a veiled photo on an official, government-issued
ID is next to useless for identification purposes.
Freeman, of course,
has every right to practice her religion as she sees fit — up to
a point. Courts have always held that religious expression is not a blanket
"freebie card" that exempts the practitioner from having to
abide by laws and regulations involving public safety and/or the rights
of others. For example, being Amish doesn't mean you don't have to abide
by traffic laws. And religious rites that harm or endanger others are
still subject to criminal prosecution — at least for the moment.
In a post-9/11 world,
the idea that anyone should be given a religious exemption to obscure
their appearance on the primary form of identification used to establish
that a person is in fact who he or she claims to be is right up there
with granting tax-exempt status to the Mafia on the basis of their "predominantly
Italian-American" heritage — and the need to "encourage
diversity," as the ACLU's Howard Marks might put it.
Moreover, Freeman
does not have an unqualified right to a driver's license; it is a limited
privilege conferred by the state, which sets forth requirements designed
to protect the public safety.
Freeman's right to
practice her chosen faith does not trump the right of Florida law-enforcement
authorities to be able to verify the identity of people they pull over.
If she wants to lawfully operate a motor vehicle on public roads, she
should have to abide by the same rules as everyone else — or take
the bus.
No I.D. required.
—
Eric Peters is an editorial writer for the Washington Times
and the auto columnist for America Online, Netscape, and CompuServe.
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