The involvement and participation of an equal opportunities officer in personnel matters of a department is excluded if she herself is affected. This was decided by the Federal Administrative Court (BVerwG) (Ref.: 5 C 14.22 of 18.07.2024).

It is true that neither the Federal Equal Opportunities Act nor the Administrative Procedure Act contain specific provisions on exclusion due to possible bias. However, according to the Federal Administrative Court, it corresponds to a „general legal principle applicable to state administration that public officials or other persons involved in the performance of the state's official duties (...) should not participate in matters whose subject matter concerns them“. This principle is standardised under constitutional law and also applies without explicit standardisation in simple law in order to protect against arbitrary state decisions. This applies not only to external administrative procedures, but also to the internal area of state administration.

An office holder should be excluded from involvement if it appears possible to actually influence the decision or the course of the proceedings. The BVerwG has already dealt with this legal principle for the activities of staff councils in the past. It now also applies to equal opportunities officers.

The contact persons for public service law in our practice are the lawyers Prof Dr Klaus Herrmann, Dr Stephan Berndt and lawyers Kristina Dörnenburg and Kristina Gottschalk, LL.M.oec