Facts
The case concerns the exclusion of an Italian-speaking student with Italian as her mother tongue from the Biology degree program at ETH Zurich due to an insufficient grade in the Physical Chemistry II examination. The student filed an appeal against this decision, as she had been prohibited from using a dictionary during the examination.
The Federal Supreme Court took up the appeal, as the student had not contested the examination result itself, but rather the examination procedure. The exception provision, according to which appeals against examination decisions are inadmissible, only applies when the actual examination result is disputed.
Considerations
The Federal Supreme Court concluded that the exclusion of the student due to the prohibition on using a dictionary constituted unjustified unequal treatment and violated the prohibition of discrimination.
While universities can generally freely choose their language of instruction and require language proficiency as an admission requirement, the principle of equal opportunity may require allowing foreign-language students to use dictionaries to create a level playing field. This is particularly relevant since persons with…