Berlin: A German court ruled Wednesday that Christian church-run institutions may generally bar their employees from wearing a Muslim headscarf.
The Federal Labour Court was judging a complaint by a 36-year-old Muslim nurse against a Lutheran hospital in the western city of Bochum.
In 2010, the woman was barred from returning to her previous job at the hospital after she had taken a months-long break, first for parental leave and then because of sickness.
The court in the central city of Erfurt found that a church institution can generally demand religiously neutral conduct from its non-Christian employees.
"Wearing a headscarf as a symbol of belonging to the Islamic faith and thus as a proclamation of a different religion is incompatible with the contractual obligation of neutral conduct of an employee of an Evangelical Church institution," the court said in a statement.
However, the panel sent the woman`s specific case back to a lower court because the judges were not certain the nurse was in a fit state to work, and to clarify whether the hospital could formally be considered an ecclesiastical institution.
