(Image source from: San Francisco Chronicle)

A group of Sikh activists in the United States has launched an online petition asking Indian origin Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris to make an apology to the community for allegedly defending a discriminatory policy in 2011 that ruled out state prison guards from keeping beards for religious reasons, even though exceptions were given for medical reasons.

The case settled in the absence of a policy change in 2011, prompting the United States Department of Justice to open a civil rights investigation and forcing California Sikhs to successfully lobby for firm workplace religious freedom laws in the state the next year.

“Kamala Harris lectures her opponents on civil rights, but she needs to apologize for trampling on the civil rights of Sikh Americans as California’s attorney general,” Rajdeep Singh Jolly, a lawyer and political consultant in Washington, D.C., said.

He said that Harris denied religious freedom to Sikh-Americans even when the Obama administration was taking historic steps to allow it.

“While the Obama/Biden administration was taking historic steps to allow observant Sikhs to serve in the U.S. military, Harris was fighting hard to deny religious freedom and equal opportunity to Sikh Americans,” Jolly said.

By Sowmya Sangam