Federal Constitutional Court: Asylum judge biased – because of theses on migration

The Federal Constitutional Court has declared a Hessian administrative judge to be biased in an asylum dispute. The reason: The judge caused a stir in 2019 with questionable theses on immigration.

An Afghan’s constitutional complaint was successful: the Afghan citizen had sued the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) in 2017 against the rejection of his asylum application. He considered the judge who had to decide about it to be biased.

This judge was right in another case of the NPD. Due to its judgment at the Administrative Court in Giessen, the NPD was allowed to hang election posters that read: “Stop the invasion: Migration kills!” Several German cities saw it as inciting hatred and left the posters hanging.

Defended NPD posters

Not so the judge in question, he ruled: The wording of the election poster ‘Migration kills’ should be assessed as “not inciting the people, but as partially depicting reality”.

And further: Immigration “naturally represents a danger to cultural values ​​in the place where immigration” takes place, and the existing “danger to German culture and legal system as well as human life” is “not to be dismissed out of hand”.

The chamber colleagues of this judge had to decide on the request for bias without him. They saw no bias and turned down the Afghan’s request for rejection. That is why the judge, who was exonerated from the charge of bias, was allowed to decide on the refugee’s complaint.

As a single judge, he was now partially right and obliged the BAMF to grant him subsidiary protection status. Nevertheless, the man moved to Karlsruhe. The Giessen Administrative Court violated his right to a legal judge, which is protected by the Basic Law, because it wrongly rejected his request for rejection.

Judges criticize arbitrary decision

The constitutional judges agree with him. To reject the bias request was arbitrary. They looked again at the verdict with which the judge allowed the NPD to hang the posters with the controversial slogans.

Doubts about the impartiality of the rejected judge arise from the rampant historical justification for the assertion that immigration “naturally represents a danger to cultural values”, and from the reference to the fact that the existing “danger to German culture and legal order as well as human beings.” Life “cannot be dismissed out of hand”.

The judgment should be written on the forehead, as it were, that the judge who drafted it regards migration as a fundamental evil that threatens the future of our community. Therefore, the Afghan was allowed to suspect the impartiality of the rejected judge and very well have doubts about the impartiality of the rejected judge. That does not change the fact that the judge temporarily granted the refugee protection status.