Legal News

The Kirpan: A Dangerous Weapon? Or More Like a Star of David?

By Dan Slater

A Sikh priest displays a Kirpan. (AP/Manish Swarup)

Kawaljeet Kaur Tagore, a Sikh woman who worked as an IRS agent in Texas, insisted on wearing her Kirpan — a small ceremonial knife intended to remind the bearer of a Sikh’s duty to protect the weak and promote justice. The IRS fired Tagore, 35, in July 2006, allegedly because of the Kirpan. So last week she sued. (HT: Tax Prof blog)

“Our government is tasked with securing our religious liberties, but in Ms. Tagore’s case, both the federal government and the local government not only failed to secure her rights, but trampled on them,” Harsimran Kaur, legal director of the New York-based Sikh Coalition, told the Houston Chron. According to Kaur, employers such as AT&T and organizations like the International Monetary Fund have reversed bans against Sikh Kirpans across the country.

The coalition, along with the D.C.-based Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and Houston civil rights attorney Scott Newar, filed the suit against the IRS on Tagore’s behalf. (Here’s the suit.)

The IRS banned the Kirpan as a so-called dangerous weapon, even though the government allows sharp scissors, letter openers, knives and box cutters in the Mickey Leland Federal Building, where Tagore worked, Newar told the Chron. “It’s a symbolic religious article that Sikhs have carried for centuries. It’s like a cross. It’s like a Star of David. It’s like any other religious ornament.”

The IRS reportedly allowed Tagore, following her refusal to part with the Kirpan, to work from home for nine months. But in January 2006 an IRS official ordered her to modify her Kirpan and report to the Leland Building by the end of the month, the suit states.

An IRS spokeswoman Lea Crusberg declined to comment.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on January 12, 2009 (boomark / email).