Breakthrough judgment: The Slovak court ruled that educating Romani children in special classes for intellectually disabled was illegal
By a judgment of 24 November 2021, the District Court in Prešov upheld the anti-discrimination lawsuit of three Roma children from the village of Hermanovce (eastern Slovakia), who were illegally educated at a local primary school in special classes for children with mild intellectual disabilities. According to the court, the defendant Private Center for Special Pedagogical Counseling in Prešov, which performed psychological diagnostics of children, as well as the primary school in Hermanovce, discriminated against them on the ground of their ethnicity. The first instance court ordered the defendants to apologize to the discriminated children and to award each of them financial compensation of 5,000 euros.