On June 22nd, the governing CDU/SPD coalition agreed to revise the city’s “neutrality law.” The legislation stipulates that teachers in public schools are not allowed to wear “visible religious or ideological symbols … and noticeable religiously or ideologically influenced garments.”
In 2015, the German Constitutional Court had ruled that a blanket ban on headscarves was unconstitutional. After the ruling, each federal state devised their own rules regarding the ban. In 2023, the same court declined to accept a complaint against the rules in force adopted by City of Berlin, effectively confirming its 2015 ruling.
The decision now ends a two-year ex-lex situation during which the ban remained legal but not enforced.
The CDU and the SPD had already agreed to amend the city law earlier, in 2023, when they formed their coalition government. Therefore the Berlin CDU-SPD welcomed the decision, but some conservative opinion leaders expressed their displeasure on social media.
Conservative publicist and former CDU member Anabel Schunke on X commented that she is ashamed of having been of a member of the CU:
The ban on wearing Islamic headgear will remain in place for Berlin police and courts. Burkard Dregger, a CDU city councillor, said they “want people who are confronted with a judge, prosecutor or police officer to be sure that they are acting in the name of the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany and not in the name of religious or other personal preferences.”
The wearing of Islamic headgear in schools would now only be banned in certain cases if “a sufficiently concrete threat or disturbance to school peace or the neutrality of the state can be proven on the basis of objectively verifiable and understandable facts”, the new regulations says.
