## Facts

- North Rhine-Westphalia amended its Education Act in 2005 to restrict political, religious, and ideological expressions by public-school teachers and certain educational staff.
- The statute barred outward expressions likely to endanger state neutrality or disturb school peace and separately prohibited conduct suggesting opposition to human dignity, equality, basic freedoms, or the democratic order.
- A separate clause exempted presentation of “Christian and occidental educational and cultural values” from the ban; the rules were extended to non-teaching educational staff.
- Two Muslim public-school employees (a teacher and a social educator/mediator) wore headscarves at work based on sincerely held religious obligations.
- School authorities ordered both to remove their headscarves; an offered alternative head covering (a wool cap) was rejected.
- Both received written warnings; one was dismissed for noncompliance.
- Labour courts upheld the sanctions, treating the statute as permitting a general prohibition on religious symbols in schools.
- The employees filed constitutional complaints challenging the final labour-court judgments and, indirectly, the statutory provisions under constitutional guarantees of religious freedom and equality.

## Issues

1. Whether a statewide prohibition on outward religious expression by school staff, justified only by an abstract potential threat to neutrality or school peace, violates constitutional protection of freedom of faith and religious profession.
2. Whether the statutory privilege for “Christian-occidental” values unlawfully discriminates on religious grounds in public employment.
3. Whether employment sanctions based on such provisions are constitutional absent findings of a sufficiently specific danger to school peace or state neutrality in the concrete circumstances.

## Decision

- The court held that religious freedom protects school staff’s outward manifestation of sincere religious duties, including wearing an Islamic headscarf.
- A blanket statutory ban based merely on abstract risk was disproportionate; the prohibition could be applied only under a restrictive interpretation requiring at least a sufficiently specific danger to school peace or state neutrality.
- The “Christian-occidental values” privilege clause was declared void as impermissible unequal treatment on grounds of religion.
- The court required that any restrictions on outward religious expression, when justified to protect neutrality or school peace, generally apply to all religions and ideologies without distinction.
- The challenged labour-court judgments were reversed and the cases remanded for reconsideration under the constitutional standards.

## Legal Principles

- Freedom of faith and religious profession protects both internal belief and outward manifestations, including religious clothing, when plausibly grounded in a sincerely perceived religious obligation.
- Restrictions on religious appearance of public-school staff require proportionality and cannot rest on generalized assumptions; an abstract danger is insufficient.
- A limitation is permissible only when outward religious expression creates a sufficiently specific danger of impairing school peace or the state’s duty of neutrality, assessed in the concrete circumstances.
- State neutrality in education requires equal treatment of religions and worldviews; privileging particular religious-cultural traditions in regulating staff expression violates constitutional equality guarantees in public service.
- Broader, time-limited measures may be permissible only in exceptional settings where documented, recurring conflicts establish the threshold of sufficiently specific danger across a school or area.

## Conclusion

The court invalidated a preferential “Christian-occidental” exemption and rejected a blanket headscarf ban in public schools based on abstract risk, holding that restrictions on religious attire by school staff must be justified by a sufficiently specific, context-based danger and applied without religious favoritism.


Headscarf Ban Case (N. Rhine-Westphalia), BVerfG, 1 BvR 471/10 & 1 BvR 1181/10 (2015)