page_title: Kippah
section_title: Civil legal issues
hierarchical_section_title: Kippah / Civil legal issues
context_page_description: A kippah; also spelled as kippa, kipa, kipah; Hebrew: כִּיפָּה‎, plural: כִּיפּוֹת‎ kippot; Yiddish: קאפל‎ koppel, or yarmulke, is a brimless cap, usually made of cloth, traditionally worn by Jewish males to fulfill the customary requirement that the head be covered. It is worn by men in Orthodox communities at all times. Among non-Orthodox communities most people who wear them customarily do so only during prayer, while attending a synagogue or in other rituals. Most synagogues and Jewish funeral services keep a ready supply of kippot.
context_section_description: In Goldman v. Weinberger, 475 U.S. 503 (1986), the United States Supreme Court ruled in a 5–4 decision that active military members were required to remove the yarmulke indoors, citing uniform regulations that state only armed security police may keep their heads covered while indoors.
  Congress passed the Religious Apparel Amendment after a war story from the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing about the "camouflage kippah" of Jewish Navy Chaplain Arnold Resnicoff was read into the Congressional Record. Catholic Chaplain George Pucciarelli tore off a piece of his Marine Corps uniform to replace Resnicoff's kippah when it had become blood-soaked after being used to wipe the faces of wounded Marines after the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing. This amendment was eventually incorporated into U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) regulations on the "Accommodation of Religious Practices Within the Military Services".
  This story of the "camouflage kippah" was re-told at many levels, including a keynote speech by President Ronald Reagan to the Baptist Fundamentalism Annual Convention in 1984, and another time during a White House meeting between Reagan and the American Friends of Lubavitch. After recounting the Beirut story, Reagan asked them about the religious meaning of the kippah.  Rabbi Abraham Shemtov, the leader of the group, responded: "Mr. President, the kippah to us is a sign of reverence." Rabbi Feller, another member of the group, continued: "We place the kippah on the very highest point of our being—on our head, the vessel of our intellect—to tell ourselves and the world that there is something which is above man's intellect: the infinite Wisdom of God."
  Passage of the Religious Apparel Amendment and the subsequent DOD regulations were followed in 1997 by the passing of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). However, the Supreme Court struck down RFRA as beyond Congress' powers to bind the states in the 1997 case City of Boerne v. Flores. RFRA is constitutional as applied to the Federal government, as seen in Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal.
  The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA), 114 Stat. 804, 42 U. S. C. §2000cc-1(a)(1)-(2), upheld as constitutional in Cutter v. Wilkinson, 44 U.S. 709 (2005), requires by inference that Orthodox Jewish prisoners be reasonably accommodated in their request to wear yarmulkas.
  The French government banned the wearing of kippot, hijabs, and large crosses in public primary and secondary schools in France in March 2004.
  The provincial government of Quebec, Canada passed "An Act respecting the laicity of the State"  in June 2019, which prohibits the wearing of "religious symbols" by government employees including teachers, police officers, judges, prosecutors, and members of certain commissions.
caption: U.S. President Bill Clinton wearing a kippah to visit the grave of Yitzhak Rabin on Mount Herzl.
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