According to a ruling by the Berlin Administrative Court, a Berlin high school may ban the demonstrative practice of religious beliefs such as prayers in school. The court ruled on Thursday that the intervention was justified in order to maintain school peace. The Society for Freedom Rights (GFF) had filed a lawsuit against the school regulations of the Diesterweg-Gymnasium in the Wedding district.
The association saw this as a violation of the state anti-discrimination law. The verdict is not yet final, but an appeal is not permitted.
According to the court, the ban represents discrimination - but it makes it more difficult for all students to have an orderly school routine. The GFF plans to submit an application for leave to appeal, as it told the Catholic News Agency (KNA).
With the decision, the court followed parts of the high school's argument. There are many religiously-related conflicts at the school. Individual religious freedom must therefore take a back seat to maintaining school peace - even if the court sees a disadvantage for Muslim students who have to practice obligatory Islamic prayers. In this specific case, the ban does not violate the Berlin Anti-Discrimination Act.
The school regulations state: “The demonstrative practice of religious rites and extreme political actions is prohibited in the interest of school peace.” According to the information, the current version of the school regulations has been in force since 2023, but the complained passage has existed for a long time. The high school is attended by more than 600 students who come from 47 countries. The majority are Muslim.
The GFF argued that the regulation de facto only affects Muslim students who perform the obligatory Islamic prayer and thus violates their religious freedom. The court ruled that the regulation was neutral because it prohibited all ostentatious rites.
According to GFF, students secretly prayed behind bushes and trash cans. The school's commitment to maintaining school peace is also very vague - individual conflicts would not be enough to speak of a threat to school peace. Ultimately, the ban violates the Berlin Anti-Discrimination Act.
Headmaster Volker Lehmann, however, denied discrimination. He reported on attempts to proselytize, pressure to confess and pressure to conform at school. Conflicts have repeatedly arisen at the high school. For example, girls without headscarves were verbally attacked, and a Muslim student came into a class during Ramadan and shouted: “Now we are all fasting.”
In addition, not only Muslims but all religions are affected by the ban. The obligatory Islamic prayer is also possible in silence, which is permitted. According to Lehmann, it is not known that students prayed in secret. A separate prayer room could not be provided for reasons of space and organizational hurdles.
The GFF had already checked Berlin school regulations for discriminatory regulations in 2023. As a result, she criticized over 20 school regulations because of bans on prayer, dress codes and the requirement to speak German in the schoolyard. The majority of schools then gave in and changed their regulations. However, the Diesterweg-Gymnasium stuck to the ban. The club therefore filed a representative action in October last year.
In principle, this is not the school's first legal dispute. As early as 2011, an 18-year-old Muslim student from Diesterweg-Gymnasium had failed before the Federal Administrative Court in his request to be allowed to pray at his school once a day outside of class times. (Af.: BVerwG 6 C 20.10)
At the time, according to the court, the restriction of the student's religious freedom was legal - in this case, public ritual prayers would have disturbed the peace in the school. The court emphasized at the time that the decision was an individual case decision.
