The landmark ruling by the Supreme Court: The education of Romani children at a purely Romani school in Stara Ľubovna constitutes segregation, which is illegal. Both the state and the founder are responsible
Roma children attending primary school in the urban district of Stará Ľubovňa – Podsadek are segregated in their education. The Supreme Court of the Slovak Republic has ruled on the appeal of the non-governmental organisation Center for Civil and Human Rights (Poradňa), which has been leading strategic court proceedings in this case since 2015. The Supreme Court agreed with its opinion that the education of Roma children in an ethnically homogeneous school close to the local disadvantaged Roma community constitutes discrimination against them on the basis of ethnicity. It confirmed the responsibility of the defendant State, represented by the Ministry of Education, and of the town of Stará Ľubovňa as the school’s founder, which, in its view, had failed to take sufficient preventive measures to eliminate the discrimination against Roma children in question. According to the Supreme Court, the state institutions are responsible also for the segregation, which arose spontaneously and not with the purposeful intention of separating Roma children from majority children.