Outdoor sports: Higher Administrative Court overturns 2G regulation

Created: 2022-01-25Updated: 2022-01-25, 2:01 p.m

A figure of the blind Justitia.

© Sonja Wurtscheid/dpa/symbol image

The Higher Administrative Court (OVG) in Lüneburg suspended the 2G regulation for the use of open-air sports facilities in Lower Saxony.

As the court announced on Tuesday, the 14th Senate granted an urgent request from a golfer who has not been vaccinated or recovered.

The regulation in the Corona Ordinance is not compatible with the general principle of equality.

Lüneburg - The decision is final.

Although this means that the regulation for team sports has also been repealed, the judges decided that it could be prescribed.

The comprehensive ban on the use of sports facilities in the open air by people who do not have proof of vaccination or recovery proves to be an inappropriate and constitutionally unjustified encroachment on the general freedom of action.

According to the court, when practicing sports with a large number of physically strenuous people in closed rooms, there is a significantly increased risk of infection, which justifies restricting access to vaccinated and recovered people.

more on the subject

Court confirms 2G rule for retail in Saxony

Hamburg's sports senator calls for more values ​​in sport

Is a transfer of business to an employee a gift?

When using sports facilities in the open air, such a significantly increased risk of infection cannot always be identified.

Without a doubt, it exists where team sports are practiced that cannot be expected to comply with a distance requirement or a mask requirement - for example football, basketball.

In the opinion of the OVG, however, there is no increased risk of infection when practicing individual sports in the open air (track and field, tennis, golf).

For the Senate, there is no indication that a differentiated treatment of the two groups of cases (team sport - individual sport) in the Corona Ordinance leads to such detailed regulations that the protective measures would lose clarity.

The fact that earlier versions of the regulation made this differentiation speaks against this.

dpa