On Monday (January 20), the District Court in Prešov dismissed a Roma girl’s lawsuit alleging discrimination in access to education during the COVID-19 pandemic. The judgment, which is not final, was confirmed for TASR by the spokeswoman of the Regional Court in Prešov, Ivana Petrufová. The plaintiff plans to file an appeal and the case will go to the regional court again.
The case concerns a lawsuit from 2022 against the Slovak Republic represented by the Ministry of Education. In it, a Roma girl from a marginalized community in Jarovnice objected that the state introduced distance education conditioned by digitization during the time of interrupted face-to-face teaching at elementary schools during the pandemic. At the same time, the plaintiff pointed to serious disadvantages in access to the Internet, digital technologies and skills that she and her family actually faced.
In the case, the district court first accepted the lawsuit in November 2023 and awarded compensation to the girl in the amount of 3,000 euros. However, the regional court of appeal overturned this decision last October and returned the case to the court of first instance for a new decision.
“According to the intentions of the decision of the superior court, within the brief reasons of the announced decision, the district court concluded that the plaintiff was connected online a few times at the relevant time, saying that she did not receive or hand in the work sheets, while the mentioned facts do not indicate that the plaintiff was discriminated againstPetrufová said about Monday’s verdict. More detailed reasons for the decision will be given in the written version of the verdict. At the same time, the court did not award the defendant compensation for the costs of the proceedings.
“We will file an appeal against the judgment of the district court. The state simply failed during the pandemic when it did not take effective measures to remove the barriers to access to established distance education faced by Roma children from disadvantaged communities,” stated the legal representative of the plaintiff, Vanda Durbáková. Free legal representation in the court proceedings was mediated to the child by the Counseling Center for Civil and Human Rights. The Ministry of Education, in response to the verdict, responded to TASR with restraint, saying that he has not yet received its written version with a detailed justification.
