The Norwegian Religious Teaching Case (Folgerø and Others vs. Norway, appl. No. 1547/02, final decision 29 June 2007)

Introduction
The Norwegian Religious Teaching Case concerns complaints lodged by 9 Norwegian nationals (led by Mr Folgerø, member of the Norwegian Humanist Association) against the Kingdom of Norway under two main heads.
A) Firstly, these minority non-Christian parents have argued that the refusal of domestic authorities to grant their children an exemption from a compulsory subject of Christianity, Religion and Philosophy (KRL) have interfered with their rights as parents to freedom of conscience and religion under Article 9 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR). It further violated their rights as parents under Article 2 of Protocol No. 1, second sentence to ensure such education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions. Article 2 of Protocol No. 1 aims to safeguard the possibility of pluralism in education which is essential for the preservation of the “democratic society” as conceived by the Convention.
B) Secondly, the KRL subject was designed in accordance with the majority Christian faith in a way that caused inconveniences and additional burden for non-Christian parents who have to exercise their right to partial exemption. This was argued to amount to discrimination, violating Articles 8 and 9 of the Convention and Article 2 of Protocol No. 1, taken together with Article 14 of the Convention.

In 1998, some of the applicants in this case brought proceedings before the Oslo City Court on account of administrative refusals of the parents’ applications for full exemption from the teaching of the KRL subject. The City Court found for the State. On appeal to the High Court and further appeal to the Supreme Court, the appeals were unanimously dismissed, on the reason that the appellants had not shown it to be probable that the teaching had