Headscarf Dismissal Ruled Unlawful

The constitutional court in Karlsruhe, the highest in Germany, has ruled that a Muslim shop assistant was wrongly sacked by her employers for wanting to wear a headscarf at work. The court refused to hear the department store's appeal against an October 2000 ruling by the federal employment tribunal, which said that wearing a headscarf was part of the woman's right to religious freedom. The 30-year-old assistant was fired when she announced she wanted to wear a headscarf for religious reasons. Her employers, the only department store in the small town of Schluechtern, western Germany, said it breached their dress code and might be off-putting for their “rural conservative customers.”