CCPR/C/123/D/2807/2016 Covenant.1 The Optional Protocol entered into force for the State party on 17 May 1984. The author is represented by counsel. 1.2 On 22 September 2017, pursuant to rule 97 (3) of its rules of procedure, the Committee, acting through its Special Rapporteur on new communications and interim measures, informed the State party and the author of its decision to consider the admissibility of the communication jointly with the merits. Facts as submitted by the author 2.1 The author is a Muslim and wears a niqab (a full-face veil). On 21 November 2011, she was stopped for an identity check while wearing her niqab on the street in Nantes. She was then prosecuted and convicted of the minor offence of wearing an article of clothing intended to conceal the face in a public space. 2.2 The author was convicted on 26 March 2012 and was ordered by the community court in Nantes to pay a fine of €150, the maximum penalty for the offence in question, which was established by Act No. 2010-1192 of 11 October 2010 (hereinafter “the Act”).2 Article 1 of the Act stipulates that no one may, in a public space, wear any article of clothing intended to conceal the face. Article 2 of the Act, on its scope of application, provides that public space comprises public thoroughfares and places open to the public or used for public services. It also establishes that the prohibition does not apply to clothing prescribed or authorized by law or justified for health reasons or on professional grounds, or is part of sporting, artistic or traditional festivities or events. 2.3 Article 3 of the Act sets the following penalties for such an infraction: a fine corresponding to category two offences and/or mandatory attendance at a citizenship course. The Act also establishes the more serious offence of forcing a person to conceal the face, which has been included in article 225-4-10 of the Criminal Code, establishing that the act, by any person, of forcing one or more other persons to conceal their face, by means of threats, violence, coercion or abuse of authority or of power, by reason of their sex, shall be punishable with one year of imprisonment and a fine of €30,000. When such an act is committed against a minor, the penalties shall be increased to two years’ imprisonment and a fine of €60,000. 2.4 The author is challenging, on the basis of article 18 of the Covenant, the ban on concealing the face in public spaces, which deprives women wishing to wear a full-face veil of the possibility to do so. 2.5 As for the steps taken by the author, as the decision of the community court judge was not subject to appeal, she filed an application for review with the criminal chamber of the Court of Cassation. She argued that the Act, which prohibited the wearing in a public space of an article of clothing intended to conceal the face and established the legal basis for the infraction of which she was convicted, was contrary to article 9 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (European Convention on Human Rights), which protected the right to manifest one’s religion. On the merits, she also claimed that the Act was discriminatory in nature, inviting the Court of Cassation to ascertain whether it “undermined pluralism by discriminating against a minority practice of the Muslim religion”. 2.6 The application was rejected by the criminal chamber of the Court of Cassation in a decision of 3 April 2013, on the grounds that “the argument regarding a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, since it was not brought before the trial judge and 1 2 2 Although she does not invoke it directly, the author also makes reference to article 12 of the Covenant. Community court judges have jurisdiction to hear civil cases involving claims of up to €4,000. For criminal cases, community courts are competent to deal with the first four categories of offences. Article 15 of the Act on the Modernization of the Justice System in the Twenty-first Century called for the abolition of community courts by 1 July 2017. On that date, civil cases being heard in community courts were transferred to a court of minor jurisdiction (tribunal d’instance).