Swiss government rejects ban on children’s headscarves in schools

Federal Council rejects ban on children's headscarves in schools Keystone-SDA

The Swiss government does not want to ban schoolgirls from wearing headscarves in public schools. It argues that the current law sufficiently ensures that all girls can take part in school, sports and swimming lessons.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

The government examined such a ban after receiving a corresponding mandate from the House of Representatives in 2024. On Wednesday, it wrote in a press release that this is an area within the jurisdiction of the cantons.

In individual cases, cantonal authorities had issued headscarf bans for schoolgirls. This had given the Federal Supreme Court the opportunity to clarify the legal situation. In a landmark ruling in 2015, the court ruled that a general ban on children wearing headscarves in public schools would not be in line with the constitution.

The government also believes that the state, and therefore also public schools, should remain neutral with regard to religious symbols. For these reasons, it is against a general ban on children’s headscarves in schools.

Translated from German by DeepL/jdp

How we work

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.  

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at [e-mail]