“It’s like a miracle,” says Andrea Breit, “that the court was able to continue operating almost without restriction last year.” The President of the Bavarian Administrative Court (VGH) is broad; On Wednesday, at a press conference, she gave information for the first time about how much the pandemic has occupied and burdened judges and other employees of the administrative courts.
The fact that many proceedings in connection with Corona landed directly at the VGH is due to the fact that many citizens turned against the infection protection ordinances of the state government – and Bavaria’s highest administrative court is responsible for so-called norm control procedures in the first instance. Since the first lockdown in March of last year, around 1140 “Corona proceedings” have been opened at the VGH. 900 of them are already done. Fatal: A single senate was responsible for almost all of them, initially consisting of three judges. “They worked practically day and night,” says Andrea Breit. Only later was the Senate increased in personnel and finally another Senate was founded.
More than half of the 1,140 cases, namely 650, were urgent norms control requests. On the one hand, as the name suggests, they should be processed more quickly. On the other hand, there was another problem: The ordinances “were occasionally a bit short of breath in their duration and were only valid for two weeks,” says Breit. The ambition was to decide on all urgent procedures in a timely manner and not to wait until a decision had become superfluous because the relevant ordinance had expired.
The areas of law with which the judges had to deal were also to some extent complex: It was about the right of assembly, the various forms of compensation and assistance, i.e. the right to subsidies, school law or the prioritization of vaccinations. “When it comes to the right of assembly, things often have to happen quickly,” says Breit. “An application comes in on Friday and the event is on Saturday. That means a night shift for the judges.”
It seems to have largely fulfilled the task of the administrative judiciary to control state action: Although the no-night exit ban was declared legal, the ban on accommodation for guests from domestic risk areas was lifted – an automatic mechanism with an incidence of more than 50 lead to a ban on accommodation is not proportionate.
In addition to Corona, asylum law was – as it has been for several years – a focus of administrative jurisdiction. In 2017 alone, 56,000 new procedures were opened in this area across Bavaria. Around 23,500 new procedures were added in 2018, 20,500 in 2019, and finally 13,500 in 2020. For the end of 2021, Andrea Breit expects that 16,000 cases will still be outstanding. However, she does not trust herself to predict how the numbers will develop after the end of the pandemic.
The VGH President highlighted two of the proceedings that are about to be negotiated: On July 22nd, the “Uhrmacherhäusl” case in Giesing will be negotiated again, which was illegally demolished in 2017, although it was a listed building. The city of Munich then wanted to oblige the owner to rebuild, but he sued and won the first instance at the administrative court. The city is now turning against this with the appeal. And on July 28th, the Munich Refugee Council complained against the government of Upper Bavaria: They refused the Refugee Council with its information bus for refugees access to initial reception and anchor centers. The district government won before the administrative court, now the refugee council is trying to turn the matter around on appeal.