German Constitutional Court Rules Against Berlin Headscarf Ban for Teachers in Win for Muslim Advocacy Groups

Ger­man media is report­ing that on 17 Jan­u­ary 2023, the Ger­man Fed­er­al Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court in Karl­sruhe reject­ed an appeal by the State of Berlin against a pri­or judg­ment by the Fed­er­al Labor Court say­ing that the Ger­man cap­i­tal can­not ban teach­ers from wear­ing head­scarves across the board. The ver­dict calls into ques­tion the state’s neu­tral­i­ty law. Accord­ing to an arti­cle by WELT:

The state of Berlin must not ban teach­ers from wear­ing head­scarves across the board. The Fed­er­al Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court did not accept an appeal by the State of Berlin against a cor­re­spond­ing judg­ment by the Fed­er­al Labor Court. […] This calls into ques­tion the con­tro­ver­sial neu­tral­i­ty law, which also enshrines the head­scarf ban.

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In August 2020, the Fed­er­al Labor Court award­ed a Mus­lim woman not accept­ed into the school ser­vice due to her head­scarf finan­cial com­pen­sa­tion of around 5,200 euros, find­ing she had been dis­crim­i­nat­ed against because of her religion.

The Berlin neu­tral­i­ty law, which has been in effect since 2005, large­ly pro­hibits wear­ing reli­gious sym­bols in parts of the pub­lic ser­vice, espe­cial­ly in the judi­cia­ry and edu­ca­tion. The law has been main­ly crit­i­cized by left-wing polit­i­cal par­ties and Mus­lim advo­ca­cy groups. In a 2021 inter­view with Ger­man media, Aliyeh Yegane Arani, an Expert Com­mit­tee mem­ber of the CLAIM Allianz, said that the law was often wrong­ly inter­pret­ed and used to dis­crim­i­nate against stu­dents based on reli­gion. CLAIM Allianz is an umbrel­la net­work of Ger­man Mus­lim advo­ca­cy groups with ties to the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB) in Germany.

In Octo­ber 2022, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed that, at a Berlin Sen­ate hear­ing, Ger­man Mus­lim activist Lydia Nofal was among a group of experts rec­om­mend­ing abol­ish­ing the neu­tral­i­ty law due to its alleged dis­crim­i­na­to­ry impact. Nofal is also the Project Man­ag­er of Inssan, a Mus­lim advo­ca­cy group pre­vi­ous­ly under sur­veil­lance by the Ger­man domes­tic intel­li­gence agency and known to have ties to the GMB in Germany.