BERLIN - A Turkish woman who insisted on wearing a traditional Muslim headscarf at work can return to the department store that fired her after Germany's federal labor court ruled Thursday she had been dismissed illegally.
The ruling that the store had a duty to respect the religious freedoms of Fadime Coral, 32, was welcomed by Germany's Central Council of Muslims as increasing job security for Muslim women.
"The headscarf has long belonged to everyday life in Germany," said chairman Nadeem Elyas.
Store manager Andrea Marburger said the verdict was "incomprehensible," noting that two lower courts had thrown out Coral's case.
"If I allow one employee to wear a headscarf, then maybe all the others will too," she said in a telephone interview.
Coral took her case to the Federal Labor Court after the two lower courts rejected her complaint about her October 1999 firing by Langer Einkaufsland, a family-owned store with some 60 employees in the small town of Schluechtern, east of Frankfurt in western Germany.
Coral, who started work for the store as a trainee in 1989, told her employer before returning from maternity leave that her religious convictions had strengthened and that her beliefs prevented her from appearing in public without a headscarf. "They told me I should come by the next day and collect my dismissal," Coral told n-tv television.
Marburger defended the store's decision. "Our reasons have nothing to do with hostility to foreigners — it was entirely about how I present our company," she said.
Still, the court argued in its ruling that Coral's refusal to work without a headscarf didn't justify her dismissal, adding that the right to religious freedom outweighs a business's freedom of operation. It found no evidence that an employee with a headscarf would cause negative reactions among customers or have any economic effect.
It was not immediately clear whether Coral would take her job back or seek compensation from the store, and her attorney could not be reached for comment.
Thursday's ruling contrasted with a ruling earlier this year by another federal court that Muslim teachers cannot wear headscarves in class, on the grounds that students' and parents' right to neutrality in schools overrides individual religious freedom.