A Supreme Court in Australia has just ruled that draconian Covid vaccine mandates issued against emergency responders were unlawful.
Australia’s Queensland Supreme Court has ruled that the COVID vaccine mandates implemented on police and ambulance workers violated their Human Rights Act.
In 2022, both police and ambulance service workers questioned the constitutionality of the mandate.
Multiple lawsuits were filed against the state over the mandate that was issued in December 2021.
In a landmark Supreme Court ruling on Tuesday, Justice Glenn Martin of the Queensland Supreme Court found the Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll’s direction for mandatory Covid vaccination to be unlawful under the Human Rights Act.
A similar Covid vaccination order issued by the Director-General of Queensland Health at the time, John Wakefield, was determined to be “of no effect.”
Enforcement of both mandates and any related disciplinary actions are to be banned, the court ruled as it delivered judgments in three lawsuits brought by 86 parties.
Justice Martin held that the Police Commissioner “did not consider the human rights ramifications” before issuing the Covid workplace vaccination directive within the Queensland Police Service (QPS).
The Covid vaccination directive to Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) workers, meanwhile, was found to be lawful.
However, Justice Martin said that the Director-General had failed to “establish that the direction he made is a term of employment of the applicants.”
Justice Martin chastised the Commissioner and the Director-General for their inflexibility in the implementation of vaccination directives and suggested that their actions were not properly supported by the evidence.
“Neither the Commissioner nor Dr. Wakefield gave close attention to the possible range of solutions,” stated Justice Martin in the decision.
“Each was presented with a proposal for mandatory vaccination with little in the way of well-developed critiques of alternative means of reducing illness and infection.”
Moreover, justifications offered by the Commissioner and the Director-General for the workplace vaccination mandates were “taken out of context” or “not supported by the evidence.”
The modeling relied upon by the Commissioner was, in fact, “nothing of the sort,” said Justice Martin.
The decision, which resolved three lawsuits brought by law firms Alexander Law and Sibley Lawyers, is the “tip of the iceberg,” said Bond University Associate Law Professor Wendy Bonyton.
Prof. Bonyton told the Australian:
“There are other cases, based on similar grounds, similarly challenging the legitimacy of directions given during the pandemic.
“This one is interesting because it is the first one to go through…
“There will be more of these cases to come.”
The lawsuits on behalf of 74 police officers, civilian staff, and paramedics were funded by Clive Palmer, an Australian businessman and founder of the United Australia Party.
Palmer said he is considering further legal action following yesterday’s win.
“We could look at the class action for the ambulance workers and the police workers who have been subjected to harassment by their colleagues at the police department on the direction of the Government to try to drop this case,” he told the press outside the Brisbane Supreme Court after the decision was handed down.
In a statement, Palmer condemned the government for its “coercion and bullying.”
Palmer also paid tribute to the police and healthcare workers for their “extreme courage” in resisting the Covid vaccine workplace directives.
Human rights lawyer Peter Fam, of Sydney law firm Maat’s Method, praised the Supreme Court decision.
“This decision will force future employers and Government officials to properly consider human rights when implementing vaccine directions in future, at least in Queensland where there is a Human Rights Act which obligates them to do so,” he told Dystopian Down Under.
Fam noted that Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory have similar human rights legislation, but other states and territories do not.
However, Fam cautioned that the Court decision has an “ominous” caveat.
“They won because the Commissioner did not appropriately consider the human rights advice she received,” Fam said.
“However, the court also found that although each of the directions limited the workers’ rights to full, free, and informed consent (under Section 17 of the Human Rights Act), the limit was reasonable in all the circumstances.
“So, if the Commissioner could have proved that she had considered the advice she received regarding human rights, her workplace vaccination directives would likely have been considered lawful.”
Fam gave his full assessment of the Supreme Court decision in a video published to his Substack today.
In a Senate hearing on February 1st of this year, Fam testified that a range of human rights were violated by vaccine mandates and other aspects of Australia’s pandemic response, which he said warranted investigation in a Covid Royal Commission.
The ruling comes just weeks after a public servant who was forced to get a Covid vaccination to keep his job won a major legal battle and received compensation.
Daniel Shepherd, 44, received two Covid-19 mRNA injections when he was a youth worker at Baptist Care South Australia in 2021 and suffered adverse reactions.
The father of one started a new job with the Department for Child Protection (DCP) on October 19 that year but was told on January 28, 2022, that he had to get a “booster” shot to keep his job as a child and youth worker.
Shepherd was given a Pfizer mRNA jab on February 24, 2022, but a day later he had serious chest pains.
The pain kept getting worse until March 11, when he thought he was having a heart attack and was rushed to Adelaide’s Ashford Hospital.
There he was diagnosed with post-vaccine pericarditis – an inflammation of the membrane around the heart.
The illness meant Shepherd was only able to work for a few months in a part-time administrative capacity.
In a landmark ruling, the judge ordered that Mr Shepherd should get weekly income support payments and the payment of medical expenses.
The ruling came despite SA Health still enforcing a mandatory Covid vaccination policy for some employees, even though other states dropped similar policies.
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