A 13-year-old secondary school student from the district of Cham was rightly excluded from lessons by the school principal, although he was exempted from the mask requirement by the certificate of a well-known doctor from the Upper Palatinate. In an urgent procedure, the Regensburg Administrative Court rejected the lawsuit against the Free State of Bavaria, in which the pupil’s mother wanted to prove with an affidavit that her child could not be expected to wear a mask.
Regensburg. This was confirmed on Friday noon, November 20, by Kristin Benedikt, spokeswoman for the administrative court, Bayerischer Rundfunk (Studio Niederbayern / Oberpfalz). A decision on the main issue is still pending, a complaint to the Bavarian Administrative Court in Munich is permitted. The justice spokeswoman said that those affected had to – literally – make it “credible” why they cannot wear a mouth and nose cover for health reasons. For a certificate, the doctor must examine the patient carefully, and the diagnosis must be clearly comprehensible in the certificate.
In the present case, the pupil had been expelled from class because the school principal had assessed the medical certificate as “insufficient” and therefore not recognized it. The court ruled that the school principal and thus the Free State of Bavaria were right: The medical certificate did not reveal the exact reason why the student could not wear mouth and nose protection. There is no concrete diagnosis of a clinical picture. The certificate states, among other things, “mask intolerance” with appropriate diagnostic abbreviations, which in turn stand for malaise, fatigue, shortness of breath, headache and dizziness “due to the toxic effect on his body”, reported the judge’s spokeswoman. According to the court, however, these are “physical or psychological side effects when wearing a mouth-nose cover, which is generally to be expected”, but which do not “reach such a level that one can speak of an illness”. The certificate also does not reveal whether the doctor even examined the student personally. On the contrary, it is “apparently a form for exemption from the mask requirement”, so that the impression arises that such exemptions are regularly issued by the doctor. This is also supported by the fact that the court has knowledge of identical certificates from the same doctor’s practice in further proceedings. The court also doubts the affidavit of the 13-year-old’s mother that a mask is unreasonable for her son, because she does not have sufficient medical expertise.
The court also explains that when wearing a mouth and nose cover, in contrast to, for example, sports exemption certificates in normal times, it is about protecting others in the pandemic, not just about your own well-being. In schools all over Lower Bavaria / Upper Palatinate, internet tips with doctors’ names and addresses are circulating that issue certificates for children and young people to be exempt from the mask requirement.
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