Religious education before the ECtHR: the opt-out clause does not suffice anymore

For some, religious education is a possibility to exercise religious freedom in its positive dimension, especially the freedom to receive a religious teaching. Others perceive religious education as a threat to negative religious freedom, namely the freedom not to be indoctrinated with religious matters. For a long time, the tension between these two aspects was resolved by providing an opt-out clause: anyone who does not want to attend religion classes can simply deselect this subject. Throughout decades, the settled case law by the European Commission of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights confirmed that providing such a clause is sufficient. However, this continuous line of jurisprudence was broken by the case of Grzelak v. Poland (15 June 2010). The Court determined in this case that exercising one's right to opt out can constitute a human rights violation in itself, since it entails a disclosure of the pupil's religious or non-religious orientation and discriminates him or her by the non-attendance of religion classes against the attending pupils. More recent judgements no longer impose requirements as strict as in Grzelak, which would render a system of exemption practically impossible to implement.