Exclusion of constitutional court judge from subsequent complaint proceedings due to prior ex officio participation in the underlying administrative judgment

The Federal Constitutional Court issued a decision ordering the exclusion of a specific judge from the exercise of his judicial office, ruling that he was disqualified from participating in the constitutional complaint proceedings (Case 2 BvR 508/21) due to prior involvement in the underlying matter. The dispute concerned a procedural motion for recusal within a constitutional complaint proceeding, where the core issue was the judge’s prior participation as a member of the Higher Administrative Court for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in the original administrative dispute (Case No. 4 A 1361/15). The decisive legal basis for this outcome was § 18 Abs. 1 Nr. 2 BVerfGG, which mandates the exclusion of constitutional court judges from a case if they have previously acted in the same matter ex officio in the prior instances, thereby establishing that the judge's prior role in the administrative decision-making process constitutes a valid ground for mandatory disqualification.