A Failure of Assimilation? Immigrant Cabbies Who Refuse to Give Rides to Customers Carrying Alcohol?

AP (here) reported earlier in the week about how taxi drivers who refuse service to travelers carrying alcohol at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport will face tougher penalties despite protests from Muslim cabbies who sought a compromise for religious reasons. The Metropolitan Airports Commission said new penalties were needed to ensure customers get safe and reliable taxi service, and voted to suspend a driver’s airport taxi license for 30 days for the first offense and revoke it for two years for a second offense.

Airport officials say more than 70 percent of the cabbies at the airport are Muslim, and many of them say Islamic law forbids them from giving rides to people carrying alcohol.

Commissioners said the old rules didn’t prevent customers from being stranded at the curb or — as reported in a few cases — dropped off before their destination after drivers learned of their alcohol on board. AP quotes Hassan Mohamud, an imam and adjunct professor at William Mitchell College of Law, as saying that:”‘We see this as a penalty against a group of Americans only for practicing their faith.”   The airport had proposed one pilot program that had drivers who wouldn’t transport alcohol display a different top light on their cab, but the public’s reaction was overwhelmingly negative and taxi drivers feared it would make travelers avoid taxis altogether.

This story raises some fascinating religious freedom issues.  indeed, it may give some con law professors some final exam ideas!  However, the reader who flagged the story for me did not read it that way but sent the article with these comments:  “Sanity prevails, for a change. Will these new immigrants ever fit into our society?”  To assimilate, must immigrant cabbies give rides to alcohol-carrying passengers?  That is a new one to me!

KJ