LOS ANGELES : Mortuary Is Sued for Refusing Muslim Child
A Muslim family filed a $4-million lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court Tuesday alleging that a Jewish-owned mortuary and its parent company discriminated against them when the mortuary refused to handle the body of their baby, saying, “We don’t pick up Muslim children. We only pick up Jews.”
On Sept. 30, 1991, hours after Fatme Elbahri of Hawthorne delivered a stillborn baby at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, her sister-in-law, Kelly Albahri , said an employee of Manilow & Silverman mortuary in Westchester told her the company picked up Jewish patients only.
A spokesman at Service Corp. International of Houston, the mortuary’s corporate owners, confirmed that Manilow & Silverman has a policy against accepting non-Jews, but said that the policy does not violate any laws.
The executive officer of the State Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers, however, said that discriminating on the basis of religion is a violation of state law, with loss of license being the maximum penalty.
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