Face coverings will be banned in Hamburg schools

Face coverings are officially banned in classrooms at Hamburg schools. A corresponding proposal from the government factions of the SPD and the Greens to change the school law was approved by the citizens on Wednesday with votes from the CDU and AfD factions. The Left parliamentary group voted against it.

Niqabs and burkas are often confused

The change in the law bans headgear that completely covers the face. Specifically, it’s about niqabs and burkas: The burka covers the body completely and only has a small, close-meshed eye grille. The niqab also covers the face, but a slit for the eyes remains free. You also wear a long robe.

“School and covering your face don’t mix,” said the SPD parliamentary group’s school expert, Nils Hansen. Being able to read the other person’s face is important for communication. He pointed out that this was already common practice in Hamburg’s schools. But the schools need legal certainty.

What does the application say?

The application specifically stated that the ban on covering the face at a formal legal level would comply with the requirements of the Hamburg Higher Administrative Court. The court ruled in 2020 that a then 16-year-old Muslim student could not be banned from school from wearing a face veil because there was no legal basis for this.

“These are isolated cases”

There are currently around ten cases known in the Hanseatic city in which girls attended classes with face veils. “Yes, these are isolated cases. And yet there needs to be a legal regulation,” emphasized Hansen. Wearing headscarves and protective masks for reasons of infection is still possible. In the future, students would not need a certificate or an application.

The AfD wanted to ban the hijab

An additional motion from the AfD parliamentary group did not find a majority among the citizens. The faction had requested that, in addition to complete veiling, the hijab should also be banned. While the niqab and burqa cover the face, the hijab is a headscarf that allows one to see the face. In principle, however, the government factions’ proposal points in the right direction, said the faction’s school policy spokesman, Alexander Wolf. Clothing that covers the face not only endangers communication, but also “stands in the way of integration into a free, secular society.”

The face covering issue is a state matter

The CDU parliamentary group’s justice expert, Richard Seelmaecker, pointed out that his parliamentary group had already requested a ban on full-face veils in all public areas in 2017.
Veiling in school lessons is a recurring topic of discussion in Germany. Because the federal states are responsible for education, the topic is regulated inconsistently. Bavaria and Lower Saxony were the first federal states to ban complete facial covering in 2017 through changes to their school laws.

How do other federal states regulate this?

The decision of the Hamburg Higher Administrative Court revived the debate about a ban on veiling in 2020 in several other federal states. In Baden-Württemberg and Schleswig-Holstein, stricter school laws came into force in the same year. Rhineland-Palatinate also supplemented its school law in 2020 in order, according to the Ministry of Education, to “legally secure the existing ban on full-face veiling”. Other federal states such as North Rhine-Westphalia and Bremen have argued in the past that they do not want to exaggerate individual cases. Full veiling is not desired in schools, but there is no reason to tighten school laws.