OSLO, 4 July 2007 — After ten years in the courts, the Norway’s religious minorities have won the support of the European Court for Human rights in Strasbourg over mandatory Lutheran-Christian education classes in public elementary schools.
Non-Christian parents sued the government over mandatory religious classes in public schools that forced non-Christian children to be indoctrinated into one particular faith.
The parents who sued claimed victory on Friday when the European Court of Human Rights narrowly ruled in their favor.
“Think that our boys would be old enough to drink champagne by the time this case was decided!” exclaimed one of the plaintiffs, Carolyn Midsem. “It’s almost unreal that it took this much time, but now we have confirmation that we were right.”
Midsem was the mother of a 10-year-old boy in 1997 that she didn’t think should have to sit through the religion class.
The court ruled that Norway’s so-called KRL classes in elementary schools (an acronym for the Norwegian words for Christian education, religion and lifestyle) violated Article 2 of the European human rights convention.
The parents wanted to exempt their children from the religion classes but weren’t allowed to do so.
They sued, and the ensuing legal appeals process took them all the way to Strasbourg.
The secretary general of The Norwegian Humanist Association (Human-Etisk Forbund) hailed the court decision, saying that the schools must now conform to the court’s decision.
