A teacher has won €3,000 after taking a German language school to court for refusing to employ her because English is not her first language. As we report in our latest issue, Rachel Tsateri, a Diploma level teacher and teacher trainer, was encouraged to take the matter to court by her followers on social media and her local English language teachers’ association, who found her a lawyer who agreed to work on a no win, no fee basis.
According to her lawyer, Patrick Mustu, the matter was settled in court when the judge at the preliminary hearing told the school that they would lose the case if they chose to pursue the matter and inlingua agreed to pay compensation.
“Germany’s highest labour court decided in 2017 that the term native speaker constitutes discrimination as it indirectly relates to somebody’s ethnic origin,” Mustu told the Gazette. “For our case, the question left was whether a language school could justify it because of the nature of the job. “
The judge made it clear that no such justification could be made.
