Muslim Teacher Wins Berlin Discrimination Case

A Muslim woman won an appeal before a Berlin-Brandenburg court on Thursday and is set to receive nearly €9,000 after she was rejected from a teaching job due to her headscarf.

The Berlin-Brandenburg court on Thursday ruled in favor of the woman, who was denied a teaching job at a Berlin elementary school, a German news website thelocal.de reported.

Head judge Renate Schaude said that the woman had been discriminated against and because her wearing a headscarf posed no danger to school peace, the discrimination against her was illegal. She was, therefore, awarded €8,680 in compensation.

She had lost her initial case last year as the Berlin school argued neutrality rules meant no one could wear religious symbols in schools.

But in 2015, Germany’s Constitutional Court ruled that general bans on state school teachers wearing headscarves were unconstitutional, unless headscarves were found to “constitute a sufficiently specific danger of impairing the peace at school or the state’s duty of neutrality”.

After this major ruling, some states had to revise their regulations, also because they gave preferential treatment to Christian symbols.

However, the Berlin-Brandenburg court ruled that Berlin’s neutrality rules were still constitutional. This law states that police, teachers and justice workers may not wear any religious apparel.