Sikhs are suing the US Marine Corps for the right to wear their turbans and beards
By Harmeet Kaur, CNN - 33m ago
Four Sikhs are suing the US Marine Corps over restrictions that effectively force them to choose between their career and their faith.
In a lawsuit filed on Monday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, attorneys for Capt. Sukhbir Singh Toor and three prospective recruits allege that the Marine Corps refuses to allow the men to keep their beards during most deployments abroad and requires them to remove their turbans and beards during recruit training. Many Sikhs wear a turban and do not cut their hair or shave their beards as an outward commitment to their faith.
The Marine Corps has said its strict grooming standards are in place to ensure uniformity and safety. But lawyers for Toor, Milaap Singh Chahal, Aekash Singh and Jaskirat Singh argue that the standards are unevenly applied and violate the men's religious rights, saying that accommodations granted by other branches of the US military have shown that Sikhs can serve and maintain their articles of faith without issue.
"Assertions that recruits can prove their fidelity to country and comrades only by betraying sacred promises they have made to God are precisely what the First Amendment's Religion Clauses were designed to avert," the attorneys state in the lawsuit.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/sikhs-are-suing-the-us-marine-corps-for-the-right-to-wear-their-turbans-and-beards/ar-AAWdstR?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=ca84c85b138d46f7a0c75f155208dc2c
