HEAD SCARVES IN GERMANY

The German Constitutional Court punted on the issue of whether teachers can be forbidden from wearing head scarves in the classroom as an expression of religous faith. The Court seems to have said that head scarves cannot be forbidden absent a law to that effect, but left open the possibility that such a law would be found constitutional. There was a (relatively rare) dissent in the case which took the majority to task for avoiding the issues. Read the International Herald Tribune article here, Reuters here, and this wide-ranging article from the BBC. See also this article in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. If you want to read the full opinion, it's here. I'll have some more to say about this later. My post on the court's earlier ruling in favor of a woman who was fired for wearing a head scarf in private employment as a salesperson in a department store is here.