The German Constitutional Court [official website] on Tuesday rejected efforts [press release] to ban the far-right ultranationalist political party National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) [party website], finding the group does not pose a sufficient threat to the German government. The German Bundesrat had filed a suit against the group in 2013 claiming that “its racist, anti-Semitic program” violated Germany’s constitution [USA Today report] by threatening the established democratic order.

This judgment is the second time the NPD has been ruled a non-threat by the Constitutional Court. According to the German constitution [PDF], a political group may only be banned if it poses an earnest threat to the country’s democracy. In 2001 the the Bundestag and the Bundesrat jointly attempted to have the NPD banned as “anti-constitutional.” However, those petitions were rejected when the court found that as many as 30 [Guardian report] of the organization’s uppermost members and leaders were undercover agents or informants for the German Secret Service. The court ruled that the presence of informants in the group’s government irreparably damaged the Bundestag’s and the Bundesrat’s case. In 2009 various politicians published information about the NPD they claimed proved the group’s unconstitutionality [report] without relying on insider information.