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The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe
Photo: Uli Deck / dpa
The restrictions on freedom imposed by the federal government in the wake of the corona pandemic were constitutional.
The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe decided on Tuesday morning.
The exit and contact restrictions as well as the school closings of the emergency brake, which expired in June, were therefore legal.
The two proceedings concerned the federal emergency brake from the third wave of pandemics in spring.
Once the lawsuits were directed against the exit and contact restrictions imposed at the time, and once against the school closings.
With the emergency brake, the federal government wanted to ensure that the same measures take effect everywhere as soon as the corona situation in a region comes to a head.
It had to be drawn automatically since April 24, if the so-called seven-day incidence in a rural district or urban district exceeded 100 on three consecutive days.
The value indicates how many new infections per 100,000 inhabitants there were within a week.
Among other things, it was planned that at night between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., apart from a few exceptions, nobody was allowed to be outside. People from one household were only allowed to meet with one other person and their children up to the age of 14. Schools were required to switch to alternating lessons from the threshold value 100, so some of the students had to stay at home. From a seven-day incidence of 165 onwards, face-to-face teaching was completely prohibited. There were exceptions here as well.
The introduction of the emergency brake triggered a wave of lawsuits in Karlsruhe. Because the measures were prescribed directly by federal law, the detour via the administrative courts was no longer necessary. By the second half of August, the Constitutional Court had received more than 300 constitutional complaints and urgent motions. The judges of the responsible First Senate rejected urgent motions against the most controversial measures such as the nocturnal exit restrictions in May. However, they emphasized that the outcome of the main proceedings was still open.
The emergency brake in the Infection Protection Act (Paragraph 28b) was limited in time and expired at the end of June.
In the newly revised law of the future traffic light coalitionaries of the SPD, Greens and FDP, the paragraph looks different and now contains, for example, the 3G rule in the workplace.
The call for tougher countermeasures had recently become louder in view of the new Omikron variant and the force of the fourth corona wave.
At lunchtime, the Executive Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) and her designated successor Olaf Scholz (SPD) want to talk to the Prime Ministers of the federal states about the crisis and possible further measures by telephone.
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