First hearing for Deni Varnhagen’s legal challenge to Covid vaccine mandate delayed

Benched footballer Deni Varnhagen’s vaccine mandate challenge was meant to start Thursday – but both sides are claiming the other has caused a delay.

AFLW player Deni Varnhagen’s legal challenge to SA’s vaccine mandate has been scratched from this week’s trial list, and won’t be heard until after the election, following an urgent application by the state government.

In an unexpected Supreme Court hearing on Tuesday, counsel for the government said they could not defend Varnhagen’s challenge on Thursday, as scheduled, due to “significant prejudice”.

Benched AFLW player and registered nurse Deni Varnhagen, is one of a group of public servants in a court challenge to Covid vaccine mandates. Picture: Supplied.

Deni Varnhagen at a protest against vaccine mandates. Picture: Supplied.

They said they could not proceed because they were still waiting for Varnhagen’s counsel to provide them with written submissions about their case, necessary to prepare their response.

They also said they had received, at 9pm on Monday, a 48-page expert report from Professor Nikolai Petrovsky, who holds an academic position at Flinders University.

They said they needed more time to consider the opinion of Professor Petrovsky – who is Varnhagen’s key witness and has claimed he faces the sack from SA Health for insisting on only taking a vaccine he has developed.

Counsel for Varnhagen, however, said those delays were of the government’s own making.

They said they continued to wait, as they had since December last year, for a sworn affidavit from State Coordinator and Police Commissioner Grant Stevens.

Without it, they said, they could not complete the written submissions sought by the government – leaving the parties at an impasse.

Varnhagen, fellow nurse Courtney Milligan, teacher Craig Bowyer, childcare worker Kylie Dudson and police officers Adam Zacary Cook and Rosalyn Smith are challenging the mandate.

They claim authorities failed to exclude all “obvious, alternative, compelling, reasonably practicable” alternatives that do not affect “common law rights or freedoms to bodily integrity”.

Deni Varnhagen’s lawyer Loretta Polson outside the Sir Samuel Way Building. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Michael Marschall

So far, the group – which insisted the case needed to be heard before Saturday’s election – have unsuccessfully applied to have the case live streamed.

They have also secured a first-of-its-kind order protecting them from excessive court costs if they lose, and issued subpoenas to Mr Stevens and chief public health officer Nicola Spurrier.

On Tuesday, and after discussions with Justice Judy Hughes, the parties reached a compromise position and agreed to postpone the trial’s starting date.

It will now start on Wednesday, March 24, and run for three days, with Mr Stevens expected to be one of the first witnesses called to give evidence.