Internationally, a case at the Federal Constitutional Court surrounding German authorities’ ability to prohibit Friday prayers in the context of the Covid-19 outbreak has caused a bit of a stir. At issue is the question as to whether public authorities have the legal right to ban Friday prayers and other religious services during the so-called…
Germany’s Christian Social Union (CSU), conservative sister party to Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has governed its home state of Bavaria since 1946. The only interruption to the party’s rule was a three-year spell by a Social Democrat in the 1950s, by now long forgotten. In particular, the CSU prides itself on having been…
Germany’s long-running judicial wrangling over the ability of Muslim women to wear the hijab in public employment has been enriched by a further episode. The Bavarian Administrative Court in Munich decreed that prohibitions banning court personnel from wearing the Islamic headcovering were permissible. Decisions based on formal criteria The case concerns a legal trainee who,…
SCRANTON, Pa. — A federal judge had dismissed a former inmate’s religious freedom lawsuit against a Pennsylvania jail, saying he had no right to a cleric from the specific Muslim sect he preferred–the Nation of Islam. Courts have ruled inmates have a right to practice their religious, but that right isn’t unlimited and must be…
On March 14, the European Court of Justice issued a widely expected and potentially consequential ruling on the right of Muslim women to wear the headscarf in their workplace. In its decision, the Luxembourg Court appeared to grant a surprisingly wide leeway to private sector employers to restrict their workers’ right of religious freedom. The cases…
