Facts
X. is married to Y. and is the mother of three children. X. works as an operating room nurse with a 70% employment rate in a clinic in the Canton of Fribourg. Her husband works as a specialist teacher at a school in the Canton of Solothurn with a weekly workload of 23 to 25 hours. In September 1999, X. applied to the Compensation Fund of the Canton of Fribourg for family allowances for her three children. The Compensation Fund rejected the application, as according to the Fribourg Law on Family Allowances (FZG/FR), in the case of married parents, the child allowances primarily belong to the father. X. filed a constitutional complaint with the Federal Court against this decision.Considerations
The Federal Court upholds the constitutional complaint. It finds that the regulation provided for in Art. 8 para. 2 lit. a FZG/FR, according to which in the case of married parents, the family allowances primarily belong to the father, violates the principle of equal treatment in Art. 8 para. 3 of the Federal Constitution. There is no objective reason to grant family allowances to dual-income couples only when the husband works in the canton, but not when only the wife meets this requirement.
The Federal Court states that the application of the cantonal competition rules in the intercantonal context can lead to inappropriate results. It therefore refers to the conflict-of-law rules of Regulation (EEC) No. 1408/71, which have also applied to the…