Question 12176 — health establishments

Summary

Ms. Andrée Taurinya questions the Minister of Health, Families, Autonomy and Disabled People about the discriminatory practices to which certain public hospital service agents are victims because of their real or supposed religion. On December 8, 2025, the newspaper Mediapart reported that a nurse at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital had been fired for wearing a cap - a widely practiced practice. widespread within hospitals. Seven years of impeccable practice, accompanied by unanimously laudatory assessments ("highly appreciated by her colleagues, doctors, but also management", "listening", "concerned about the quality of patient care"), will not have been enough to protect Madjouline from a real hunt for headgear, revealing an Islamophobia atmosphere. The South Union health at Salpêtrière indicates that the people targeted by these calls to order are, on a recurring basis, Muslim caregivers or perceived as such. According to his statements, hundreds of health professionals would be affected by such practices. For the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital alone, twenty similar cases have already been identified, among which nine caregivers have been dismissed. Of the Concurring testimonies also report identical facts in Marseille, Lyon and even Rennes. If the principle of secularism imposes an obligation of neutrality on public service agents, this naturally concerns the prohibition of the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols. However, the cap - a small cap commonly worn in the operating room - cannot, by its nature, be assimilated either to a religious sign or to an ostentatious sign. From the In the same way that professionals wear caps in the catering sector, caregivers wear caps in the hospital sector, without this referring to any manifestation of religious proselytism. This was, among others, the case of Madjouline since 2018, which had, until then, never been the subject of the slightest observation. Several members of the nursing staff also attest to not having never been summoned by management for wearing a cap. How can we explain such differential treatment, if not by a clear desire to discriminate against Muslim women or those perceived as such? As a reminder, article 1 of the Constitution states that France “ensures equality before the law for all citizens without distinction of religion”. Furthermore, in a decision issued in 2020, the Council of State affirmed that the only port of a beard by a doctor cannot be considered, in itself, as the manifestation of a religious conviction. In this case, the management of the Saint-Denis hospital had demanded that a practitioner cut his beard, its length being deemed allegedly ostentatious. Even though successive Governments have continued to weaken the public hospital through budget cuts, nearly 15,000 nursing positions remain vacant in the hospitals according to the French Hospital Federation, Islamophobia undermines the hospital institution. A pediatric department even had to close beds following the dismissal of two caregivers for simply wearing a cap. Such a situation illustrates how racism constitutes a poison for society, as decisions based on astonishing reasons can produce extremely serious effects on the continuity of service. public and more broadly on the population. “What a waste of time and energy!” Losing staff for such reasons is totally crazy,” deplore doctors at the hospital, rightly so. Faced with this situation, which is both ludicrous and deeply unacceptable, she questions her about the concrete responses she intends to provide so that healthcare workers are no longer threatened with dismissal because of their religion. real or supposed arising from their physical appearance.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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