ST. LOUIS - Taxi driver Nabeel Langrial was talking to another cabbie near the Lumière Place casino last summer when an enforcement agent for the Metropolitan Taxicab Commission stopped to tell him his hat did not conform to the driver dress code.

Langrial, a 23-year-old Muslim, told the officer the reddish-brown cap — called a kufi — had religious meaning. Still, the agent wrote him a ticket for the dress code violation. The agent also wrote him up for not displaying a taxi license, for refusing to cooperate and for returning a cab to service without a reinspection.