(SF Chronicle) The Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations alleges Air Canada employees discriminated against a 12-year-old national squash player by forcing her to remove her hijab in the middle of a bustling tunnel at San Francisco International Airport in August.
After passing through the Transportation Security Administration’s security screening along with her squash teammates without incident on Aug. 1, Bay Area resident Fatima Abdelrahman was stopped by an Air Canada employee while trying to board her flight en route to Toronto’s Pearson International Airport for an international tournament, according to a letter of complaint directed to Air Canada officials Friday.
The employee, the complaint alleges, demanded she remove her hijab because it was part of their preboarding identification procedure. Two more employees told Fatima she needed to remove it because she was not wearing it in her passport photo.
