(Deutsche Welle) In 2015, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court ruled against a general headscarf ban for teachers, saying that such a ban was incompatible with the freedom of religion guaranteed in the German Constitution.
Nine years later, the same court is again addressing this long-standing political and social issue. A lay judge, who wears a headscarf for religious reasons, filed a constitutional complaint with Germany’s highest court because a Higher Regional Court in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia has barred her from taking the office she was elected to in 2023.
Neutrality vs. religious freedom
The regional court ruled that any religious symbols worn by the lay judge during a trial would violate the state’s requirement of neutrality. It described it as a dilemma, a “collision between the fundamentally protected practice of religion and the state’s requirements of neutrality when exercising the office of lay judge.”
