Thuringian parity law: constitutional complaint failed

Created: 2022-01-18Updated: 2022-01-18 11:33 AM

A figure of the blind Justitia.

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In Thuringia, after a court decision, parties cannot be forced to fill electoral lists equally with men and women.

Now a constitutional complaint also failed - which other federal states may have looked at with excitement.

Karlsruhe/Erfurt - No obligation to parity: The legislature is still not allowed to require parties in Thuringia to fill their lists of candidates for state elections alternately with men and women. After a court in the federal state declared a parity law void, the appeal to the Federal Constitutional Court also failed. The first chamber of the second Senate did not accept a constitutional complaint for decision, as the court announced on Tuesday. The constitutional complaint was inadmissible, it said.

In its reasoning, the chamber pointed out that the federal states had extensive constitutional autonomy under the Basic Law.

"In addition, they can, unless the Basic Law stipulates special requirements, arrange their constitutional law and their constitutional jurisdiction at their own discretion," the court said.

In principle, decisions by state constitutional courts could be challenged by constitutional complaints.

However, the complainants had not sufficiently demonstrated a possible violation of fundamental rights or rights equivalent to fundamental rights, it said.

In the summer of 2020, the Thuringian Constitutional Court overturned a statutory quota system for state elections in Thuringia.

The President of Thuringia's Constitutional Court, Stefan Kaufmann, justified the decision by the freedom of choice that elections should not be carried out by coercion and pressure from the state.

At that time, the Thuringian AfD had sued against the obligation to quote.

A parity law also failed in Brandenburg because it was overturned by a court after complaints by the NPD and AfD.

The Federal Constitutional Court noted that the Thuringian Constitutional Court assumed that the parity law interfered with the principles of freedom and equality of choice and freedom and equal opportunities for parties.

"In any case, this assumption does not appear constitutionally untenable from the outset," it said from Karlsruhe.

The Thuringian state parliament had decided on the quoting of the state lists in 2019 with the votes of the Left, SPD and Greens.

The aim of the amendment to the law was to increase the proportion of women in parliament in the future.

In Thuringia, it is currently less than a third at 31 percent, in other federal states the proportion of women is sometimes significantly lower.

There have also been repeated calls for quoting rules in other countries.

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In North Rhine-Westphalia, the opposition factions of the SPD and the Greens submitted a draft for a parity law some time ago.

According to this draft, the state election lists of the parties will in future have to be filled alternately with women and men.

However, with the current CDU/FDP government coalition, the prospects for a law are extremely slim.

NRW Equal Opportunities Minister Ina Scharrenbach (CDU) had already expressed skepticism about this.

Brandenburg was the first federal state to introduce a parity law in January 2019, ahead of Thuringia.

In both cases, there were constitutional concerns from the start.

dpa