A Mus­lim po­lice of­fi­cer has lost his le­gal chal­lenge over a T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) pol­i­cy pre­vent­ing its per­son­nel from hav­ing beards.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment on Thurs­day evening, High Court Judge Bet­sy-Ann Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son dis­missed a law­suit brought by Kris­t­ian Khan, who was claim­ing the pol­i­cy breached his con­sti­tu­tion­al right to free­dom of con­science and re­li­gious be­lief.

The out­come of Khan’s case came hours af­ter High Court Judge Robin Mo­hammed up­held a sim­i­lar con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge to the min­i­mum height re­quire­ment for per­sons seek­ing en­try in­to the TTPS.

In both cas­es, the judges had to con­sid­er whether the two poli­cies un­der the Po­lice Ser­vice Reg­u­la­tions, in­tro­duced in 2007, are im­mune from ju­di­cial chal­lenge based on the con­sti­tu­tion­al sav­ings clause.

Un­der Sec­tion 6 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, leg­is­la­tion which is found to breach cit­i­zens’ fun­da­men­tal rights can­not be chal­lenged if passed be­fore the coun­try’s Con­sti­tu­tion was amend­ed in 1976.

Amend­ments to pre-1976 leg­is­la­tion, such as the reg­u­la­tions, are al­so im­mune pro­vid­ed they (the amend­ments) dero­gate from fun­da­men­tal rights in the same man­ner as the pre­vi­ous leg­is­la­tion.

In his judg­ment, Jus­tice Mo­hammed not­ed that the 2007 reg­u­la­tions low­ered the height re­quire­ment for prospec­tive male of­fi­cers by al­most two cen­time­tres and the height re­quire­ment for prospec­tive fe­male of­fi­cers by al­most 13 cen­time­tres. He said the change re­sult­ed in the un­jus­ti­fied ex­clu­sion of more male can­di­dates with the same height or taller than fe­male can­di­dates.

In as­sess­ing Khan’s case, Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son ruled the 2007 amend­ment to the reg­u­la­tions on fa­cial hair mir­rored reg­u­la­tions that were in place in 1965.

“As such, it is an ex­ist­ing law and is pro­tect­ed from hav­ing to sat­is­fy the con­sti­tu­tion­al re­quire­ments in the fun­da­men­tal rights pro­vi­sions in the Con­sti­tu­tion,” she said.

Un­like her col­league, Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son did not first con­sid­er whether the reg­u­la­tion breached Khan’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, as she point­ed out such was not nec­es­sary based on the ap­pli­ca­tion of the sav­ings clause.

“Giv­en the op­er­a­tion of the sav­ings clause, ad­ju­di­ca­tion on whether the Claimant’s rights were breached was ren­dered otiose,” she said.

As part of her de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son or­dered Khan to pay half the le­gal costs in­curred by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in de­fend­ing the case, as there was a pub­lic in­ter­est el­e­ment in it.

In his court fil­ings, Khan claimed when he joined the TTPS in 2014, a se­nior of­fi­cer in­struct­ed him to shave or ob­tain a med­ical ex­emp­tion and he re­luc­tant­ly com­plied.

Khan pre­sent­ed the ev­i­dence of Is­lam­ic ex­perts Mufti Abraar Al­li and Mufti Waz­im Khan. Both claimed keep­ing a beard is a fun­da­men­tal part of Is­lam.

Khan al­so con­tend­ed that shav­ing the beard is con­sid­ered un­law­ful and im­per­mis­si­ble by lead­ing Is­lam­ic ju­rists.

Last year, sev­er­al Mus­lim prison of­fi­cers filed cas­es over a sim­i­lar pol­i­cy with­in the Prison Ser­vice. Those cas­es are still pend­ing.

In Oc­to­ber last year, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad up­held a law­suit from Dil­lion Ram­raj, who was pre­vent­ed from be­ing re­cruit­ed by the TTPS be­cause he had a vis­i­ble tat­too. Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ruled that the TTPS’s tat­too pol­i­cy is un­con­sti­tu­tion­al, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and ill-ad­vised.

Khan was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, Kent Sam­lal, Natasha Bis­ram and Vishaal Siewsaran.

The State was rep­re­sent­ed by Keisha Pros­per, Tr­isha Ram­lo­gan, Avion Ro­main, Anala Mo­han and Mur­vani Ojah-Ma­haraj.