Austria court overturns college headscarf ban
Austria's constitutional court possesses struck down a good law prohibiting primary college children from wearing particular religious head coverings.
It said regulations was aimed at the Islamic headscarf and breached rights on the subject of religious freedom.
The law was passed during the previous coalition government in which the conservative People's Party was allied with the far-right Freedom Party.
The court said regulations could bring about the marginalization of Muslim girls.
In addition, it rejected the government's argument that the prohibition could protect ladies from social pressures from classmates, telling it penalized the wrong people.
It said, if necessary, the state needed to draw up legislation to raised prevent bullying on the grounds of gender or religion.
The legislation, which arrived to force last year, didn't specify that headscarves were banned but instead proscribed the wearing of "religious clothing that's associated with a covering of the head" for children up to age 10. The federal government had itself stated that head coverings put on by Sikh boys or the Jewish skullcap wouldn't normally be affected.
The court determined that the ban was actually aimed at Muslim headscarves.
"The selective ban... applies specifically to Muslim schoolgirls and thus separates them in a discriminatory manner from different pupils," court President Christoph Grabenwarter said.
Education Minister Heinz Fassman said he took note of the judgment but added: "I regret that girls won't have the possibility to make their way through the training system free from compulsion."
Austria's Islamic Faith Community, which signifies the country's Muslims and brought the legal challenge, welcomed the ruling.
"Ensuring equal opportunities and self-determination for women and women in our society is not accomplished through bans," it explained in a statement.
When the legislation was first proposed in 2018, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said the goal was to "confront any specific creation of parallel societies in Austria".
Vice-Chancellor Heinz Christian Strache, of the Freedom Party, said the government wanted to protect girls from political Islam.
The ban arrived to force in May 2019, just times after Mr Strache was forced to resign after staying secretly filmed offering public contracts to a female posing as a Russian oligarch's niece.
The People's Party is currently in coalition with the Green Party, however the government had even now designed to extend the headscarf ban up to the age of 14.
The coalition's current program stipulates that children should grow up "with only a small amount coercion as possible". The only example it offers may be the wearing of headscarves.
