VIENNA — Austria’s Constitutional Court on Friday upheld a law banning girls under 14 from wearing headscarves in schools, reversing the thrust of a 2020 ruling that had struck down an earlier ban and handing the government a victory in a case watched closely across Europe.
The court found that the new law, passed in 2025, differed from its predecessor in a way that mattered: rather than singling out Islamic dress, it was framed as protecting all children from “religiously motivated clothing requirements” before the age at which Austrian law lets them choose their own religion, and it required schools to respond to violations with counseling rather than punishment in the first instance. On that basis, the judges ruled 10 to 4 that it was compatible with the Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.
The ruling carried conditions. The court said the law could not be applied to a child who could show that the decision to cover was her own, and it ordered the Education Ministry to issue guidance within six months on how schools were to make that determination. “A measure to protect a child’s freedom cannot itself become a means of overriding it,” the judges wrote.
Barbara Steiner, a senior official in the integration ministry, called the decision “a confirmation that Austria may protect girls from pressure without insulting anyone’s faith.” She said the ministry estimated that fewer than 2,000 of the roughly 80,000 Muslim girls in Austrian primary and lower secondary schools wore a headscarf.
The Islamic Religious Community in Austria, the officially recognized body representing Muslims, said it would take the case to the European Court of Human Rights. “The court has decided that the state knows better than a 12-year-old and her parents what she believes,” said its spokesman, Hakan Yildiz. “The conditions are welcome. The premise is not.”
Clemens Berger, a professor of public law at the University of Graz, said the ruling was more cautious than either side acknowledged. “The court did not say headscarf bans are fine,” he said. “It said this one, with these safeguards, applied this way, is fine. Whether it survives Strasbourg depends on whether schools actually hold the conversations the court is requiring, or just send a letter home.”
At a school in Favoriten on Friday afternoon, Elisabeth Moser, who has taught fourth grade there for 22 years, said she had two girls in her class who wore a headscarf. She had not yet read the ruling. “I will have to sit with their mothers,” she said. “I would rather the ministry had told me what to say before the court told me I have to say it.”
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 12, 2026, Section A, Page 4 of the European edition with the headline: Austria’s Top Court Upholds Headscarf Ban for Girls Under 14, With Conditions.
