The Alternative for Germany (AfD) has filed a lawsuit against the Federal Office of the Constitutional Protection (Verfassungsschutz) before the Administrative Court of Cologne. The party announced the lawsuit, which is connected to an urgent request, on Monday.
The background of the lawsuit is the upgrading of the AfD to a “verified extremist tendency” by the Federal Office. The party considers this to be unlawful and an interference in the democratic competition. “We will exhaust all legal means” said party leaders Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel.
The Verfassungsschutz justified the classification with “the people-degrading extremist character of the entire party”. “The ethnic-racial understanding of the people prevailing in the party is not compatible with the liberal democratic constitutional order. It aims to exclude certain population groups from equal social participation, subject them to unconstitutional discrimination and thereby assign them a legally devalued status” it further stated.
Specifically, the AfD considers German citizens with a migration history from Muslim-influenced countries as not being equal members of the ethnic definition of the German people. “This exclusionary understanding of the people is the starting point and ideological basis for continuous agitation against certain individuals or groups, which leads to their unfair and irrational fear and rejection” said the Verfassungsschutz.