A three-year old court case may have a major impact on the ability of landlords to exclude troublemakers from their premises, after eight men received thousands of euros of compensation between them this week for being unlawfully excluded from a nightclub.

Vienna court found three men had been prevented from entering a nightclub near the city ring-road because of their skin colour, while another five in their party had also been kept out because they complained about the behaviour of the bouncers. The three “migration background” men were awarded €600 each, while their friends took €350 each — a total of some €3,550, reports TheLocal.at.

The Austrian Allgemeines Gleichbehandlungsgesetz (equal treatment act) prohibits discrimination based on gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and a number of other factors. The case was brought by the Litigation Association, reports Der Standard, a legal group that specialises in bringing about test cases to help “discriminated individuals to exercise their rights”.

The lawyer involved in the case is reportedly disappointed the payouts were not higher.

Operating discriminatory door policies at night clubs is common practice accross Europe, although in many cases not technically legally permissible, as landlords seek to ensure the right clientèle and therefore environment for patrons. As a legal precedence this case, which has taken three years to see a ruling will open up bar owners to punitive legal action if they continue to exercise that power to refuse entry to migrants.

The matter of admitting large groups of migrant males to nightclubs and other venues where native European women drink alcohol or dress immodestly is a hot topic in Europe at the moment in light of the New Year’s Eve attacks in a number of European cities. In addition to the well publicised sex attacks in the cathedral square in Cologne, young women were molested in the streets, where nightclubs with their strict door policies provided a safe-haven for attacked women until the police could arrive.

Breitbart London reported on the case of one such young couple, who were walking along a street as they were engulfed in an “artificial stampede” of migrant men, who attacked the young woman “in the crotch”. The woman’s boyfriend dragged her to a nearby nightclub where the attackers were unable to follow.

In another case, a female member of staff unwittingly stepped out of a safe night club into a group of migrant attackers outside while breaking her shift for a cigarette. She told local press a group of Arab men pulled her dress and pulled off her underwear before running away.

Press coverage of this week’s Vienna court case over the three “migrant background” men has been careful. Vienna’s Die Presse broadsheet newspaper failed to mention the reason for the men having been denied entry at all, an increasingly common practice in Europe where in some places obscuring the ethnicity of subjects is becoming the norm.