Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court just ruled that it is discrimination to request that women change seats on El Al Airways if ultra-Orthodox Jewish men object to sitting next to them. Details from BBC News:
Passenger Renee Rabinowitz, who is in her 80s, brought a damages case against the airline, after she was asked to move.
Jerusalem Magistrate's Court said such requests break discrimination laws.
The airline says it never pressures passengers to swap seats.
Ms Rabinowitz, a Holocaust survivor, was flying from Newark in the US to Tel Aviv in 2015, when the air steward made the request.
She said she felt "humiliated".
Many strictly Orthodox men avoid accidentally touching women other than their wives in order to guard against extra-marital attraction, a concept in Jewish law known as negiah.
Civil rights group Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), which was representing Ms Rabinowitz in the case, said the win was "a huge victory" in a "long fought battle against gender segregation in the public sphere".
Negiah sounds like something that faux-Christian Mike Pence would embrace, since he has an irrational fear of being in a room alone with a woman not his wife. Negiah also echoes the same philosophy used by Pence and others of his ilk drafting medieval legislation in Indiana blatantly discriminating against gays and Muslims and using the excuse of religion. These people are not standing upon any high moral ground, bigotry is bigotry, pure and simple no matter what group is being discriminated against. This is a landmark victory in the international sphere. It would be nice if the principles of fairness and decency that were so clearly applied here could be used to address draconian legislation in this country as well. When religion is used to justify hate or discriminate blatantly the courts must intercede as this one did and do the right thing.