The former AfD member of the Bundestag Jens Maier from Saxony, who is classified as a right-wing extremist, should no longer be allowed to work as a judge and be put into early retirement. The Leipzig service court for judges declared a corresponding application by the Saxon Ministry of Justice to be admissible. Presiding judge Hanns-Christian John said Maier was no longer acceptable as a judge. The verdict is not yet legally binding. The 60-year-old’s lawyer held out the prospect of an appeal before the Federal Service Court.
The house of Justice Minister Katja Meier had applied for retirement. The Greens politician argued that anyone who is viewed as a right-wing extremist by state authorities can no longer be a credible representative of the judiciary. Maier has been classified as a right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Saxony since 2020, but he has lodged a complaint with the Dresden Administrative Court. He had lost his mandate in the 2021 federal election and then wanted to return to the judiciary.
During the oral hearing, the court went through all of Maier’s statements individually, which the Ministry of Justice had compiled. This included tweets on his account or campaign speeches. A wreath-laying ceremony to commemorate the bombing of Dresden in World War II was also performed.
Judge: Terms pejorative and racist
Among other things, a tweet was quoted in which Boris Becker’s son was racially insulted. The terms used in this and other tweets are derogatory and racist, Judge John said in his sentencing. From all the statements it follows that Maier is “a person not suitable for the judicial office”. It is also not important for the court whether it could be irony or satire, as Maier’s lawyer Jochen Lober had argued in part.
In court proceedings, the parties can no longer trust that Maier judges constitutionally, impartially and without regard to persons, John said. The judges largely followed the arguments of the Saxon Ministry of Justice, which had referred to paragraph 31 of the Judges Act. According to this, a judge can also be retired “if facts outside of his judicial activity compellingly require a measure of this kind in order to avert a serious impairment of the administration of justice”.
“You can be sure that we will take action against it”
The defense lawyer Lober had spoken of a “collection of phrases, insinuations, ultimately inventions” in the process. The ministry also made inaccurate claims about Maier in a “dishonest way”. It reads things into the statements that are not there. After the verdict, Lober said: “After the verdict is before the verdict.” He will still discuss this with his client, “but you can assume that we will take action against it.” Saxony’s Justice Minister Meier, on the other hand, spoke of a nationwide trend-setting judgment.
Parallel to the hearing before the service court, disciplinary proceedings against the ex-MP are running at the Dresden Regional Court. It could also be about the question of whether Maier will lose his salary. However, this procedure could also take several instances.
In general, proceedings against judges are extremely rare. At the beginning of the year, Minister Meier spoke of “completely new legal territory”. The ministry should have followed a similar case in Berlin a few weeks ago all the more attentively. There, a service court decided that the judge and former AfD member of the Bundestag Birgit Malsack-Winkemann will not be retired. The speeches in the Bundestag are protected according to the Basic Law and should not lead to any official sanctions, the reasoning said.
