Taxi dashboard religious icons lead to court fight

A Canadian cab driver will fight in court to keep family photos, flags and religious artifacts on his dashboard in violation of a city rule aimed at keeping cabs tidy, local media said Tuesday.

Arieh Perecowicz, 65, spends up to 15 hours per day driving passengers around Montreal.

He has done so for more than 40 years and he has not had a single customer complaint about the photos of his wife, daughter and son, or of the late Lubavitcher spiritual leader on his dashboard.

Two mezuzahs -- tiny prayer parchments typically affixed to doorframes of Jewish homes that according to beliefs offer protection -- affixed to his car frame also have not offended clients, he told the daily Globe and Mail.

Even so, he was recently fined on six occasions for a total of 1,400 Canadian dollars by the taxi bureau for refusing to remove the offending items.

Perecowicz heads to court next week to argue that his constitutional right of personal and religious expression is being violated by authorities' enforcement of a Montreal bylaw that prohibits objects in cabs "not required for the taxi to be in service."

The case is also expected to test the line between personal and public space, said the Globe and Mail.

A taxi may be considered a private workspace like an office, where family photos are commonplace, for example. But proponents of clutter-free cabs also note that a taxi becomes a public space once a passenger gets in.

It is not uncommon to see rosary beads, crucifixes or other religious artifacts dangling from a taxi's rearview mirror in this and other countries.

Perecowicz told the Globe and Mail he is not especially religious, but he is comforted by having articles of his Jewish faith in the car.

"I am secular but I do have roots and a culture," he said. "These items mean something to me and that's why I've always had them in my car."

Peter Foster of the Diamond Taxi Association of Montreal countered: "A citizen has the right to get into a taxi and expect that it's not cluttered with all kinds of junk."

"The idea is that you get into a taxi and it looks like a taxi and there's no extraneous stuff," he said.