{"id":769913,"date":"2026-05-03T06:59:38","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T06:59:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/769913\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T06:59:38","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T06:59:38","slug":"dmv-forces-ultra-orthodox-nyc-woman-to-remove-head-covering-against-her-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/769913\/","title":{"rendered":"DMV forces ultra-Orthodox NYC woman to remove head covering against her faith"},"content":{"rendered":"

A pair of heartless DMV workers forced an ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn mom to strip her religious head covering for a driver\u2019s license photo \u2014 leaving her \u201ctraumatized\u201d and fearing an antisemitic ambush.<\/a><\/p>\n

Sara Fellig ultimately complied with what she described as the \u201ccoerced violation\u201d of her faith and has lived with the shame ever since, she said in a Brooklyn Federal Court lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cForcing Ms. Fellig \u2014 or any married, ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman who wears a head covering \u2014 to remove [their] head covering in public is akin to forcing a secular person to strip naked in front of strangers, carrying all the same shame, humiliation, and abasement,\u201d she said in the court papers filed against the state Department of Motor Vehicles.<\/p>\n

The workers at the Atlantic Avenue DMV office allegedly refused to let Sara Fellig wear her religious head covering. Helayne Seidman for the NY Post<\/p>\n

Two of Fellig\u2019s three young daughters, all of whom were under 4, were ill and she was forced to drag one of the sick youngsters with her to the Atlantic Avenue DMV office in downtown Brooklyn for her November appointment, she said in legal papers.<\/p>\n

As she always does in public, Fellig was wearing a partial wig, or sheitel, along with a small hat. In Orthodox Judaism, a married woman\u2019s hair is considered a sacred thing which should only be viewed by her husband.<\/p>\n

When it was time to take her photo, one of the workers insisted Fellig remove the head covering.<\/p>\n

State law forbids photos which \u201cobscure\u201d a person\u2019s face or make identification difficult, but Fellig claims her hat and wig were not covering her face.<\/p>\n

So she protested, prompting the worker to ask if she wore the hat for religious purposes.<\/p>\n

But when the young mom said yes, the employee bizarrely declared: \u201cWell you still can\u2019t wear your hat,\u201d according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

A second worker failed to intervene or correct the first employee, despite state law allowing those with \u201csincerely held religious beliefs\u201d<\/a> to obtain an exemption.<\/p>\n

Fellig didn\u2019t want to reschedule the DMV appointment \u2014 but says being forced to violate her faith left her traumatized. Merih Unal Ozmen \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

Nearly 100 people were in the DMV office when Fellig was forced to remove her head covering, she claimed. Helayne Seidman for the NY Post<\/p>\n

\u201cMs. Fellig was so disturbed by the prospect of removing her head covering in public that she contemplated calling her rabbi to discuss the unlawful circumstances she was facing,\u201d she said in the legal claim.<\/p>\n

But mindful of past hateful episodes, Fellig hesitated. In 2020, on Empire Boulevard, a passerby called her a \u201cf\u2013king Jew,\u201d and in 2023 on the same street, a bigot told her, \u201cthe Nazis should have finished their job, you f\u2013king Jewish bitch.\u201d<\/p>\n

With nearly 100 people in the room, and \u201cmindful of shifting sentiments against the Jewish community <\/a>due to the war in Gaza . . . Ms. Fellig decided not to call her rabbi, worried that onlookers would believe her to be an angry Jewish person seeking to make trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, she removed her head covering and stood for the photo and was \u201covercome with guilt,\u201d she said in the legal filing, in which she demands unspecified damages, the destruction of her current license photo and a free replacement.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach time someone views the photograph, Ms. Fellig experiences a renewed desecration of her religious beliefs,\u201d according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cMs. Fellig\u2019s emotional damages will continue and multiply until a new photograph is taken and a new license issued,\u201d she said in the court papers, adding, \u201cshe fears condemnation from her Chabad community \u2014 and her rabbi \u2014 if they discover that her official New York State ID depicts her without appropriate headgear.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe DMV has the right rule in place \u2014 but, for no reason at all, it wasn\u2019t followed in Ms. Fellig\u2019s case,\u201d her attorney, Emma Freeman, said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A pair of heartless DMV workers forced an ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn mom to strip her religious head covering for…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":769914,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,1121,101881,336,5248,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,159559,83273,67,586,132,5230,68,1154,2969],"class_list":["post-769913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-brooklyn","tag-dmv","tag-lawsuits","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-orthodox-judaism","tag-religious-freedom","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-news","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116509354672136313","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=769913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/769914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=769913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=769913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=769913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}