The ZDF journalist Birte Meier has failed before the Federal Constitutional Court with her constitutional complaint about discriminatory payment.

As the court announced on Tuesday, the formal requirements for the complaint were not met.

According to the Karlsruhe Chamber decision (1 BvR 75/20), the presentations were not sufficiently well-founded, and deadlines were sometimes missed.

The reporter accuses ZDF of being paid less than her male colleagues for no objective reason.

Katja Gelinsky

Business correspondent in Berlin

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With the negative decision from Karlsruhe, however, the legal dispute has not yet been finally decided.

It was "at least not obviously hopeless from the outset" that the reporter could assert a claim for payment from the labor court, writes the constitutional court.

It points out that in 2020 the journalist had successfully obtained information about the payment of her male colleagues from ZDF before the Federal Labor Court.

The Federal Labor Court has clarified that a comparative salary that exceeds one's own remuneration justifies the presumption of discrimination based on gender.

The result is a reversal of the burden of proof.

This means that the employer, in this case ZDF, must demonstrate that there are factual reasons for the unequal treatment.

The Federal Constitutional Court was not able to use the submissions in the constitutional complaint to reliably check whether Meier had used all of the regular court options to defend himself against the alleged discrimination.

However, the so-called exhaustion of legal recourse is a prerequisite for Karlsruhe deciding on the matter.

A clear nod to the labor courts

In the legal dispute, Birte Meier is supported by the Society for Freedom Rights, which conducts strategic court proceedings to enforce fundamental rights.

The organization spoke of a "positive signal" - despite the formal shortcomings that the court blamed on the authors of the complaint.

In December 2021, the reporter filed a claim for payment with the Berlin Labor Court based on the information obtained about the comparative salaries of male colleagues.

The references of the Federal Constitutional Court to the successful request for information by the plaintiff, the law professor Nora Markard, board member of the Society for Freedom Rights, rated as a "clear signal to the labor courts".

Birte Meier has been suing ZDF for fair payment since 2015.

According to the Society for Freedom Rights, the court-enforced information decision showed that male colleagues received around 800 euros more a month in 2017 than Meier.

On top of that, the men received performance bonuses of up to 1,450 euros a year – but not the editor, who was awarded several times for her journalistic work.

During the legal dispute, the ZDF editors-in-chief transferred the plaintiff from Berlin to Mainz after 13 years with the political magazine "Frontal 21".

From autumn 2022 she will be the chief investigative reporter for her new employer RTL.