Regardless of one’s politics, pretty much everyone agrees that Justice Bernd Zabel shouldn’t have worn a Make America Great Again hat in his Hamilton, Ontario courtroom the day after the U.S. presidential election.

Last week, Zabel faced a disciplinary panel to answer for his unofficial wardrobe choice.

He said it was all a joke at the hearing, but had previously said he wanted to stick it to all the Hillary Clinton supporters in his workplace.

Love Trump. Hate Trump. It doesn’t matter. As the Americans say, justice should be blind. Let’s keep the politics out of it.

And while we’re at it, let’s talk about applying this principle consistently across the public service, whenever Canadians interact with their government.

We’re pretty good at it in most respects. It’s not like polling clerks on election day are allowed to wear buttons supporting candidates. Police officers, firefighters and other law enforcement have their uniforms. We run a tight ship.

But still, the Quebec government felt it needed to go one step further to codify some form of this into law. Not for overt political displays this time, but religion.

Bill 62, which is supported by the governing Quebec Liberals and now working its way through committee, calls for a “duty of religious neutrality” on the part of all public servants.

That effectively means a ban on face coverings, the most prominent of which is the niqab.

This has become an issue in the NDP leadership race, of all places, where the party is hoping to woo back those voters Jack Layton first enticed in the 2011 election but that Justin Trudeau won back in 2015.

Quebec politics is an entirely different scene. There you have voters who would strongly support both the NDP and niqab bans, the sort of blend that wouldn’t happen in Anglo NDP strongholds like Toronto and Vancouver.

The candidates are divided. Guy Caron, from Quebec, is OK with the bill.

But Ontario’s Jagmeet Singh calls it Islamophobic and Niki Ashton posted on social media: “You can’t tell a woman what she should be wearing.”

"You can't tell a woman what she should be wearing" #ndpldr — Niki Ashton (@nikiashton) August 27, 2017

Ashton meant that as an indictment of the government’s bill. But I wonder if she’d use the same line on Zaynab Khadr.

“All sects of Islam have agreed unanimously that homosexual acts are a sin, hijab is mandatory, imams must be men,” reads a post Omar Khadr’s big sis shared on her Facebook page (which has since been made private). “If you reject this, you are lying to yourself and you are weak in faith. Accept Islam for what it is or leave our mosques.”

Looks to me like that’s telling women what to wear. It’s also a reasonable summary of what many women in niqabs likely think.

A whole bunch of complaints poured into the Ontario Judicial Council about Justice Zabel, arguing the hat implies he can’t separate his political support from his professional conduct.

By the same logic, a public servant in a niqab might well make non-covered women or LGBTQ clients uncomfortable.

The broader public in Canada doesn’t yet have a long enough frame of reference when it comes to Islam to have this conversation now. But sooner or later we’ll have to acknowledge that the niqab is as much a political statement as it is religious.

This is why it’s been banned over the years and in varying degrees in countries throughout Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

“The niqab and burka have nothing to do with Islam,” Raheel Raza, the president of The Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow, wrote in a 2016 Huffington Post column. “They’re the political flags of the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS, the Taliban, al-Qaida and Saudi Arabia.”

Looked at this way, it’s one giant body bag of a political message. At least the MAGA cap only covers the hair.