Austria court rules alpine hotel’s burkini ban was religious discrimination against Muslims

SALZBURG, Austria (MNTV) — An Austrian court has ruled that a hotel’s decision to bar two Muslim women from wearing burkinis in its swimming pool amounted to religious discrimination — a politically charged verdict in a country where hostility toward visible Muslim dress has become a staple of mainstream and far-right politics alike.

The Salzburg Regional Administrative Court found that a hotel in the ski resort town of St. Johann im Pongau had discriminated against two sisters — practising Muslims from Upper Austria — after staff refused to let them enter the pool in the full-body swimsuits worn by some Muslim women seeking modesty while swimming.

The court dismissed the hotel management’s appeal and upheld the fine already imposed on them, according to reporting by the Salzburger Nachrichten and other Austrian outlets.

What happened at pool

The incident took place last autumn, when the two women, who had booked a short holiday at the hotel, asked to use the pool while wearing burkinis. Management refused.

According to court records, the hotel’s manager justified the ban on hygiene grounds and argued that other guests would feel uncomfortable — but also told the women they needed to adapt to Austrian customs, reportedly stating that one might swim in a burkini “perhaps in Saudi Arabia, but not in Austria.”

The hotel ultimately paid to relocate the women to different accommodation.

They then filed a complaint with the local district authority in St. Johann im Pongau, which imposed a €100 fine on the hotel’s management in February.

The managers appealed — and lost.

Court’s reasoning

The court comprehensively rejected the hotel’s defence. On hygiene, the judges found the argument did not hold up, noting that burkinis are made from the same materials as any other swimwear and that routine water-quality checks at the pool had revealed no irregularities.

That conclusion aligns with the position of Austria’s Agency for Health and Food Safety, which found in 2020 that swimwear is not a significant source of germs, and with a government statement to a parliamentary inquiry confirming burkinis are neither harmful to water nor unhygienic.

The court also noted that the hotel had no written pool rules and had not enforced any such regulation consistently — meaning there were no objective grounds for the ban.

Crucially, the judges found not only indirect but direct discrimination: the manager’s own statements, they said, made clear that certain people were unwelcome in the pool specifically because of their religious swimwear.

Telling the women they had to conform to Austrian customs, the court found, constituted direct discrimination on religious grounds.

On top of the existing €100 fine, the hotel’s managing director was ordered to pay an additional €20 to cover procedural costs.

Not national precedent

The presiding judge cautioned that the ruling would not establish a binding nationwide precedent, noting that indirect discrimination remains permissible under certain conditions.

The Austrian Hotel Association described the case as an individual decision but said it nonetheless provided useful clarity on how hotels should handle such requests, adding that burkinis had not previously caused significant problems in the Austrian hospitality industry.

The hotel’s managers retain the option of appealing further to Austria’s Constitutional Court or Administrative Court.

One of the two women, a lawyer who describes herself as a peace activist, responded to the verdict by reframing the issue away from clothing altogether.

People cover their bodies for health, cultural, religious, or personal reasons, she said, and being forced to undress is experienced as a deep humiliation.

For the good of everyone, she argued, the question should not be whether people dress or undress but how they treat one another — because respect and humanity are the foundation of the peaceful coexistence on which everyone depends.

Austria against European current

The ruling is notable for cutting against the prevailing direction of European policy on Muslim dress. The burkini has become a recurring target of far-right campaigns across the continent, and several countries have moved to restrict it. In France, a number of coastal towns enacted temporary beach bans in 2016 — overturned by the courts after a political firestorm — and the country’s highest administrative court has since upheld the right of state-run public pools to ban the garment on hygiene and secularism grounds.

The Belgian city of Antwerp bans it outright. Several European countries, including the Netherlands and Denmark, have prohibited the face-covering burqa and niqab.

Austria itself is no exception to the broader trend. While the country does not explicitly restrict Muslim dress for women and girls over the age of 14, its law banning face coverings in public effectively prevents women from wearing the burqa or niqab — and it recently enacted a headscarf ban for schoolgirls under 14 that its Muslim community overwhelmingly opposes and is challenging in court.

A rare win, in hostile climate

Against that backdrop, the Salzburg ruling stands out as an unusual instance of the Austrian legal system siding with the right of Muslim women to dress as they choose.

It arrives at a moment of considerable political sensitivity: the far-right Freedom Party won the most votes in Austria’s 2024 national election and has consistently led polls since, while restrictions on Muslim dress have moved steadily from the fringes into the mainstream of Austrian debate.

For the two sisters at the centre of the case, the outcome affirmed a straightforward principle — that being made to choose between covering their bodies according to their faith and accessing a hotel swimming pool was not a matter of hygiene or custom, but of discrimination. The court agreed.