27 October 2016

Woman sues dentist over job rejection for headscarf

A dentist in Stuttgart is being taken to court by a woman whom he rejected for a job as his assistant on the basis that she wears a Muslim headscarf.

“We do not employ women who wear headscarves and do not understand why applicants would expect us to,” the rejection letter said, according to the woman’s lawyer.

The woman, who is an experienced dental nurse, now intends to seek damages from the dentist in a labour court, Spiegel reports.

According to German law, no one can be treated differently in the workplace based on things that have nothing to do with their ability to perform their job, such as ethnicity, religion or age.

The dentist has now gone public with an apology, stating on his website that his letter of rejection was “insufficient and utterly wrongly formulated”. [The Local] Read more