So-called "racial profiling," the practice of checking people based on external characteristics such as skin color and other attributions, will continue to occupy the German judiciary. As recently as October 2012, the Higher Administrative Court (OVG) of Rhineland-Palatinate caused a stir across Europe with a ruling that the check of a student solely because of his "skin color" was incompatible with the principle of equality enshrined in the Basic Law. Now, two new cases against the Federal Police are pending before the administrative courts in Stuttgart and Cologne – here, too, the plaintiffs' "skin color" was the reason for the checks.
The proceedings before the Stuttgart Administrative Court concern the lawsuit of a 28-year-old employee of a federal company from Berlin. On November 19, 2013, he was the only passenger in the first-class carriage of an ICE train between Baden-Baden and Offenburg. He was checked without any apparent reason, apparently because of his skin color. Three federal police officers recorded his personal details and checked them against police databases. The plaintiff was only informed that the ICE was traveling in a border region. The Cologne Administrative Court, on the other hand, is dealing with the lawsuit of a 38-year-old alternative medicine practitioner from Witten. While waiting for his partner at Bochum Central Station on November 12, 2013, he was also checked by two federal police officers solely because of his skin color. The officers' only explanation was that they were looking for people from North Africa and Syria.
The legal basis for such "suspicion-independent" checks is found in Section 22 Paragraph 1a of the Federal Police Act (BPolG). According to this provision, officers can decide, based on "situational awareness and border police experience," whom to check in order to prevent illegal entry, even without the existence of a threat. Although Article 3 Paragraph 3 of the Basic Law prohibits discrimination against people on the basis of origin or skin color, people who, in the eyes of the federal police officers, "do not look German" are regularly subjected to these checks.
“The Federal Police Act itself creates the conditions for the repeated violations of the principle of equality in German train stations and on trains. We are therefore now seeking a judicial clarification of whether Section 22 Paragraph 1a of the Federal Police Act is still compatible with the Basic Law,” explains attorney Sven Adam, who represents the two plaintiffs. “We will therefore propose to the courts during the proceedings that the matter be referred directly to the Federal Constitutional Court,” Adam continued.
The proceedings are accompanied and supported by self-organizations such as the Initiative of Black People in Germany (ISD-Bund), the International League for Human Rights eV, the Campaign for Victims of Racist Police Violence (KOP), the Office for the Implementation of Equal Treatment (BUG), the Republican Lawyers' Association eV (RAV), the Association of Democratic Lawyers eV (VDJ), the working group of critical lawyers at the Humboldt University of Berlin (akj-berlin), the Committee for Basic Rights and Democracy eV and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
For further questions, please contact attorney Sven Adam using the contact details provided.
Background information on the proceedings before the Higher Administrative Court of Rhineland-Palatinate from 2012 can be found here:
http://www.anwaltskanzlei-adam.de/index.php?sonderseiten-vg-koblenz-presseinformationen
