The Balancing and the open neutrality against the religious and racial discrimination in the sentence of the German Constitutional Court of 2015 about the use of the headscarf by teachers

Abstract

The article analyzes the decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court in January of 2015, related to two constitutional appeals of two Muslim teachers who wanted to use the veil during the exercise of their work in the school. The BVerfG will annul a paragraph of art. 57.4 of the Education Act of the Land of North Rhine-Westphalia, which prohibited teachers from wearing the headscarf, while permitting the use of Christian and Jewish religious symbols, as contrary to the constitutional right to religious freedom (art. 4 of the German Constitution), art. 3 GC, the right to equal treatment and non-discrimination by religion and by race (Article 3 GC), and contrary to equality in access to civil servants (Article 33 GC). This decision is having a great impact in the inclusion in the German society of the Muslim women citizens with origin in the immigration. The article reflects the legal consequences and the immediate application of this doctrine in lower courts. The study focuses on the use that the BVerfG makes of the techniques of legal argumentation, weighting, proportionality principle, and principle of practical agreement, to resolve fundamental rights in conflict. The BVerfG makes an innovative use in the weighting of the DF, on the one hand the rights related to teachers, such as equality of treatment and parity of religions in a social context of growing religious pluralism, the principle of non-discrimination by Religion, equal access to civil service, non-discrimination of women. On the other side of the balance, they will be placed; the right of religious freedom of the pupils and the right of education of the parents, as well as the constitutional educational mandate of the State and the principle of school peace. The BVerfG will bet on a constitutional model to defend the open neutrality of the State towards religions, reinforcing the current constitutional model of separation with friendly cooperation, but insisting on the need for a new opening and flexibility towards the presence of minority religions, granting (Neutrality open to all religions, Toleranzslösung), in turn with respect to German history and tradition, and rejecting a model of strict or distance neutrality with the religions, (strenge Neutralität Lösung or Distanz Neutralität), separating from the sentence of the second senate of the BVerfG, in the Ludin case of 2003, which left this option as possible. The new decision of the first senate also rejects a model of cooperation (positive neutrality), but that privileges Christian (Protestant and Catholic) confessions or the dominant culture (Deutsche Leitkultur) which would end in a return to a certain confesionalidad of State. The ruling concludes that a general law prohibiting the use of the headscarf to the teachers in the German public schools would be contrary to the GC and that could only be prohibited in the concrete cases in which it represents a real danger in certain circumstances and not by a purely abstract danger, granting the constitutional protection to the two appellants.

Summary:
I. Introduction. The social context in which the German Federal Constitutional Court takes this decision. II. The argumentation in the decision of the German Constitutional Court in 2015 about the use of headscarfs by school teachers. III. The facts and the Education Law of North Rhine Westphalia. IV. The legal arguments of the Constitutional Court. V. The Rights of the Plaintiffs. V.1. The right to religious freedom and the use of religious garments in that space. V.2. The equal access to be civil servant and the discrimination of Muslim women. VI. The other side of the weigh scale: the Rights of the third parties. Examination of the limits to fundamental rights in the present case. Concrete danger versus abstract danger. VI.1. The negative religious liberty of pupils and the limit of prohibition of indoctrination by teachers. VI.2. The right of parents (art. 6.1. German Constitution). VI.3. The open neutrality principle in the public education and the equal treatment of religions. VII. The examination of the constitutionality of the art. 57 of the North Rhine Westphalia Education Law. VII.1. Restrictive interpretation of subsection 1 of the art. 57.4. It can be used only when facing concrete danger. VII.2. Analysis of the subsection 2 of the article 57.4 of the education law of North Rhine Westphalia. VII.3. The clause of the privilege of the Western Christian values of art. 57.4.3 of the education law. VII.4. Discussion on the art. 7 paragraph 1 and art. 12.3 of the Constitution of North Rhine Westphalia. VII.5. The previous legislative drafts. VIII. Conclusions.