The appeal by AfD politicians against the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has been unsuccessful.
Two politicians from the AfD party in Saxony, Jens Maier and Roland Ulbrich, have lost their legal battle against the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The Dresden Administrative Court dismissed their lawsuit seeking to have their personal details removed from the agency's files.
Maier is a former Bundestag member who served as a judge in Saxony before joining the AfD in 2017. He was the leader of a right-wing faction within the AfD, which was classified as extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in 2020. When he lost his seat in the Bundestag elections in 2021, he tried to return to the judiciary in Saxony. However, the state Ministry of Justice opposed this, citing his past affiliations with the AfD. Both the Service Court in Leipzig and the Federal Service Court at the Federal Supreme Court in Karlsruhe upheld the decision to deny him reinstatement.
In the lawsuit, Maier wanted the statements about him in the Saxon constitution protection reports for 2020 and 2021 deleted. These statements identified him as the head of the AfD faction and a speaker at a Pegida event with Björn Höcke, a known right-wing extremist.
Ulbrich, too, requested the deletion of all personal details the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution had on him. The lawyer from Leipzig argued that his monitoring by the Office and the collection of his personal information interfered with his duties as a state parliament member and infringed upon his right to freely carry out his mandate.
Ulbrich resigned from the AfD parliamentary group in the Saxon state parliament in January, doing so to avoid expulsion from the parliamentary group. Currently, expulsion proceedings are ongoing against him, and he has become known for his extreme right-wing statements.
Trying to protect their reputations, the two men failed to convince the court to remove their information from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution's files.
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The dismissal of the lawsuit by Maier and Ulbrich at the Dresden Administrative Court upholds the decision made by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution to keep their personal details in their files, as they are both affiliated with the AfD party, which is classified as extremist by the agency. Despite their attempt to protect their reputations, this ruling in the administrative court serves as a reminder of the legal provisions that safeguard the protection of the constitution in Germany.
Source: www.ntv.de
