HEAD SCARVES AND EMPLOYER'S RIGHTS IN GERMANY

A woman can't be fired for wearing a head scarf to work, the German Constitutional Court announced today in a decision that it said required balancing religious freedom and the rights of the business owner.

A lower federal court had sided with the employee, who worked as a salesperson in the perfume section of a store and had recently decided to deepen her commitment to Islam, a decision that included wearing a head scarf in public. The employer had claimed that salespeople have "intense contact with customers," and that employers' freedom to fire them should be protected even if the basic reasons for the termination are religious.

Note the following paragraph, which rejects a categorical approach to rights:

In contrast to the position of the petitioner [i.e., the employer], the colliding basic rights of the employee and the petitioner do not in themselves provide any abstract standards that could determine how much restriction of the freedom to terminate employment the employer must accept in order to safeguard the [religious] freedoms of the employee in the context of a contract freely entered into by both parties. Rather, what is necessary is a weighing of the reciprocally protected basic rights of the contracting parties in the particular case; the result of this weighing is not definitively provided by the constitution itself. Rather, it is the job of the specialized courts, in the context of the particular case and with respect to the particular employment relations, to determine whether or not the employer's particular expectations for the conduct of the employee can justify termination, when the employee sees herself unable to comply with those expectations while acting within the realm of her constitutionally protected freedoms.

Entgegen der Auffassung der Beschwerdeführerin ergeben sich aus den kollidierenden Grundrechtspositionen der Arbeitnehmerin und der Beschwerdeführerin abstrakt keine Maßstäbe dafür, welches Maß der Einschränkung seiner Kündigungsfreiheit der Arbeitgeber letztlich hinnehmen muss, um den Freiheitsraum des Arbeitnehmers im Rahmen des von beiden Parteien freiwillig eingegangenen Vertragsverhältnisses zu wahren. Vielmehr bedarf es einer Abwägung der wechselseitig geschützten Grundrechtspositionen der Vertragspartner im Einzelfall, deren Ergebnis durch die Verfassung selbst nicht abschließend vorgegeben ist. Es ist vielmehr in erster Linie Sache der Fachgerichte, bezogen auf den konkreten Streitfall und das je betroffene Arbeitsverhältnis abzuwägen, ob im Einzelfall eine bestimmte Erwartungshaltung an das Verhalten des Arbeitnehmers eine Kündigung des Arbeitsverhältnisses rechtfertigen kann, wenn der Arbeitnehmer sich im Rahmen seiner grundrechtlich geschützten Freiheiten nicht in der Lage sieht, den an ihn herangetragenen Erwartungshaltungen gerecht zu werden.

The lower court based its decision on the inability of the employer to show that "disruptions" had actually happened because of the head scarf. It's not clear to me how much of a disruption would be necessary in order to show that the employer's business interests had been harmed, but the line of argument here does present itself as an explicit balancing of the basic rights of employer and employee, so, theoretically, the right to wear a head scarf at places of employment is by no means absolute.

The opinion is here, and a news account is here. A case concerning the rights of teachers to wear head scarves is still to be decided. This latter case has caused a media spectacle in Germany, so much so that the court issued this press release loosening restrictions on cameras in the courtroom and detailing the expected behavior of members of the press with regards to the proceedings. Reporters are directed to turn off their cell phones before entering the courtroom, for example.