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The outdoor chairs and tables of a restaurant are stacked on top of each other.
© Martin Schutt/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa/Symbolbild
In the Corona autumn of 2020, Thuringia extensively restricted public life.
From the perspective of the AfD parliamentary group, this went too far.
The Thuringian Constitutional Court has now decided.
Erfurt - Thuringia's Corona protective measures from autumn 2020 were mostly legal according to a decision by the Thuringian Constitutional Court.
In particular, the state government was entitled to impose the extensive restrictions on private travel that were imposed at the time, said the vice president of the court, Lars Schmidt, on Wednesday in Weimar when the verdict was announced.
“The pandemic situation was developing very dynamically and difficult to predict at the time the ordinance was issued.” That is why the state government was allowed to impose far-reaching interventions on people’s fundamental rights - even though a parliament is generally responsible for such decisions.
In autumn 2020, Germany experienced the second major corona wave after the number of new infections registered fell significantly in summer 2020.
Specifically, the current decision of the constitutional judges refers to the country's Corona Ordinance of October 31, 2020, which was valid until the end of November 2020.
The AfD parliamentary group submitted it to the Constitutional Court for review.
In essence, she argued in court that the regulation as a whole was constitutionally inadmissible because it interfered too deeply with people's fundamental rights.
The Constitutional Court expressly did not follow this argument.
Blanket closure of fitness studios not permitted
However, the constitutional judges declared two details of the regulation invalid.
On the one hand, the part of the regulation that also closed gyms across the board at the time was constitutionally inadmissible.
However, recreational sports for individual athletes, for two athletes from different households and for several athletes from the same household were declared permissible at that time.
With this blanket order, the court explained that the fitness studios were treated unfairly and unequally compared to other recreational sports facilities.
It was at least conceivable that individual athletes could have trained there too.
According to the court's decision, several fine provisions from the regulation are also inadmissible.
Among other things, these were not specific enough, it was said.
Thuringia's Health Minister Heike Werner (Left) reacted positively to the decision.
She said she was “very happy” that the court declared most of the points in the regulation to be permissible.
She cannot imagine that fitness studios could try to sue the state for damages based on this decision.
At least there were aid payments for the affected companies back then.
dpa