Muscat says legal notice discriminates against female lawyers

Labour leader Joseph Muscat yesterday labelled as discriminatory a legal notice specifying that women lawyers are to wear a suit or a skirt and white blouse in court.

Speaking during a party activity in Żurrieq, Dr Muscat said the Opposition was challenging this sexist legal notice with a motion in Parliament, as it showed the government was not in tune with gender equality.

However, the claim of discrimination was dismissed by the very guardian of equality in Malta, the head of the National Commission for the Promotion of Equality (NCPE), while the Justice Minister said the issue had already been solved with two more legal notices.

Legal notice 280 of 2008, published in the Government Gazette on November 11, deals with an amendment to the Criminal Code and looks into the dress code of lawyers before any of the superior courts of criminal jurisdiction.

It lays down that "advocates... shall wear a dark blue, charcoal grey or black suit or pin-striped trousers and black jacket, a white shirt with a black, grey or white tie or bow-tie and black gown. Lady advocates... shall wear black or blue or charcoal grey suits, or a white blouse and a black skirt under a black gown."

The notice does not say that women lawyers can only wear a skirt.

Dr Muscat argued that, in this day and age, women and men are to be treated as equals and women should be allowed to choose whether to wear a skirt or trousers.

He said the legal notice went against the principles of gender equality and, after the Christmas period, the Opposition would be filing a motion to repeal it. A Labour Party spokesman said the motion had already been filed on Tuesday by Labour MPs Justyne Caruana and José Herrera.

When contacted, however, Sina Bugeja, the executive director of the NCPE, said she did not perceive the legal notice as discriminatory as such although it went into "excessive detail".

The wording highlighted the legislator's paternalistic approach towards lawyers who are professionals and know what is appropriate court wear, she said.

Then again, she added, one would have to understand if any incident had sparked off the need to go into dress code specifics.

One might argue that the legal notice discriminates against men as it does not allow them to wear skirts, she joked.

Moreover, when contacted, Justice Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici pointed out that the dress-code issue raised was "in hand and had already been solved" with two legal notices issued last week by the Rule Making Board that was independent of him.

Legal notices 332 and 333 of 2008, published on Friday, made amendments to the Code of Organisation and Civil Procedure, adding the words "or trousers" to the part "white blouse and a black skirt".

Yesterday, Dr Muscat stressed the importance of changing to an EU mentality, in which people believed they could achieve anything they put their mind to.

The "spying network" set up by the Nationalist Party showed it did not believe in civil rights, he added.

He referred to the case of alleged exchange of people's personal data between the government and the Nationalist Party.

More than 15 public employees, he said, had been called for meetings at the PN's headquarters during office hours. The meetings included the involvement of people who were in the secret service in the 1980s and chairmen of companies that "run the government's assets."

Dr Muscat said the Labour Party will also be taking Parliamentary action over the legal notice announcing the new water and electricity tariffs.

He insisted that there was no need to increase the tariffs and the government was only doing it to rake in more money to make up for the funds it wasted during the general election.