New court ruling
Covered by freedom of expression: NPD election poster “Migration kills” was permitted
Supporters of the NPD at a rally (archive image)
© Hendrik Schmidt / DPA
In the 2019 European election campaign, the city of Mönchengladbach had a provocative NPD election poster removed because of alleged hate speech. The Federal Administrative Court has now declared this decision illegal.
An election poster from the NPD district association in Mönchengladbach with the slogan “Migration kills” was permitted. With a judgment published on Tuesday, the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig subsequently declared an order by the North Rhine-Westphalian city to take down the posters in the 2019 European election campaign to be illegal. The poster could be understood in such a way that it was still covered by freedom of expression. (Az: 6 C 8.21)
The posters read: “Stop the invasion: migration kills”. The names of numerous places where immigrants allegedly committed crimes against German citizens could be seen in the background.
The city thought the posters were incitement to hatred and ordered that they be taken down. On the other hand, the NPD complained. The Administrative Court in Düsseldorf and the North Rhine-Westphalian Higher Administrative Court (OVG) in Münster still agreed with the city. “The election poster aims to equate all migrants with murderers, of whom Germans everywhere should be afraid,” the OVG explained.
The Federal Administrative Court has now overturned these judgments and declared the administrative order to be illegal. The federal judges in Leipzig emphasized that the statement intended by the NPD was irrelevant. The “understanding of an unbiased and understanding audience” is decisive.
Court on the NPD poster: It depends on the interpretation
In the case of ambiguous statements, according to the case law of the Federal Constitutional Court, “the variant that is still covered by freedom of expression should be taken as a basis”. It should also be taken into account that the posters were put up during the election campaign, “in which competing political proposals are typically only compared in an abridged and exaggerated manner.”
Here, the Higher Administrative Court assumed that the poster was aimed at migrants living in Germany and not at the “migration process”. The Higher Administrative Court “completely ignored” other variants of interpretation “such as criticism of the federal government’s migration policy that does not constitute hate speech.”
The lower court also understood the place names in a generalized way. But a “limiting reading that would not relate the crime scenes mentioned to all migrants as (potential) perpetrators” is also possible. The Higher Administrative Court also referred to the party program of the NPD when laying out the election poster. What is decisive for his understanding, however, is “solely his statement itself”.