Excerpt:
An anti-discrimination group has said a housing body's refusal to lodge a family because the mother wore a burqa is clear discrimination.
According to newspaper le Canard Enchaîné the husband, wife and three children were refused access to social housing by the housing association at Vénissieux because the mother "wears the burqa, which characterises a religious practice incompatible with the essential values of the French community and the principals of equality between the sexes."
The reason was made in a letter outlining the decision to the local prefecture.
It reflects a ruling by the Conseil d'Etat which in July 2008 refused French nationality to a Moroccan woman who wore a burqa.