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Within the case of the Sikhs, the Marine Corps has dug in over extra than simply sensible issues. It additionally says beards and turbans are a possible risk to a extra summary idea of unity.
The 13 weeks of boot camp are the crucible the place strange residents are become Marines, taking away practically all particular person identification — telephones, private garments, hair types and even the phrase “I”: Drill instructors drive recruits to confer with themselves solely as “this recruit.”
“This transformative interval units the muse for additional service by breaking down individuality and coaching recruits to think about their staff first,” the Marine Corps wrote in February when it denied an lodging for one of many potential Sikh recruits, Aekash Singh. “Uniformity is a key element of this course of. Consequently, limiting exceptions throughout this transformative course of constitutes the least restrictive means to additional the federal government’s compelling pursuits.”
Mr. Singh and two different potential recruits, Jaskirat Singh and Milaap Singh Chahal, declined to be interviewed. In an announcement, they mentioned: “We stay prepared to fulfill the excessive psychological and bodily requirements of the Marine Corps as a result of we need to serve our nation alongside the perfect. We can not, nevertheless, hand over our proper to our non secular religion whereas doing so.”
Within the swimsuit filed on Monday, their legal professionals argued that the Marine Corps routinely permits different recruits into boot camp who don’t match homogeneous look requirements. Ladies are allowed to maintain their lengthy hair throughout coaching, and the Corps lately loosened restrictions on tattoos, permitting recruits to have ink protecting the whole lot however their palms, head and neck.
The Corps mentioned the change within the tattoo coverage was meant “to steadiness the person needs of Marines with the necessity to keep the disciplined look anticipated of our occupation.” The Sikhs say of their lawsuit that “it’s perverse to say that respecting ‘the person needs of Marines’ to have full-body tattoos is in line with mission accomplishment, however that respecting Marines’ needs to be trustworthy to God is someway dangerous.”
Giselle Klapper, a civil rights lawyer with an advocacy group, the Sikh Coalition, who is among the legal professionals representing the plaintiffs, mentioned that the coalition tried for greater than a yr to barter an answer with Marine Corps leaders, however that the Corps had been unreceptive.
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