AFLW Crows premiership player Deni Varnhagen challenges SA Covid-19 rules, vaccine mandate, in Supreme Court
Top footballer Deni Varnhagen says SA’s vaccine mandate amounts to “coercion” of medical professionals – and wants a court to strike it out.
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AFLW Crows premiership player Deni Varnhagen has launched a Supreme Court challenge to the state’s Covid-19 rules – and the mandate that she, as a nurse, must be vaccinated.
Varnhagen, who was placed on the club’s inactive list last month, has joined with a fellow nurse, a teacher and a childcare worker in a bid to overturn SA’s vaccination requirement.
Authorities have not, they argue, excluded all “obvious, alternative, compelling, reasonably practicable means” of pandemic management that do not affect “common law rights or freedoms to bodily integrity”.
Outside court, the group’s solicitor, Loretta Polson, said the case boiled down to one question.
“Does a policeman have the power to coerce health workers and teachers to undergo medical treatment against their wishes?” she said.
Documents filed with the court state Varnhagen, early childhood worker Kylie Dudson and teacher Craig Bowyer “have not received a Covid-19 vaccine”.
The other member of the group, nurse Courtney Millington, “has received one dose”.
They ask the court to judicially review and quash the vaccine mandate, imposed in October, saying it is not a “reasonably proportionate” response to the pandemic.
It “cannot be lawfully exercised” and is “invalid”, they argue, because it is “not a real use of power” available under legislation, and is also “not suitable” and “unnecessary”.
“(It was) designed to prevent disruption to the provision of healthcare and education services due to unvaccinated workers becoming sick from Covid-19,” the documents assert.
“(However it has) caused a significant number of persons to otherwise be put on leave, furloughed, terminated or not perform their employment.”
The group says the government should instead permit exemptions and remote working for, and require PPE-wearing and rapid antigen testing of, unvaccinated workers.
They also challenge SA’s state of emergency, saying its numerous extensions since March 2020 are “fundamentally inconsistent” with state law.
The extensions should, they argue, be declared “invalid and of no effect”.
Neither Varnhagen nor her fellow applicants attended court for the matter’s first hearing on Friday.
That hearing had to be moved between courtrooms, twice, due to a large group of people who filled the public gallery and did not wear masks despite warnings from court staff.
The Advertiser understands that group is not connected to Varnhagen, nor any of the other applicants.
In court, Simon Ower QC, for the group, asked the case be fast-tracked to either a trial or a Court of Appeal hearing “as soon as practicable” in early 2022.
Solicitor-General Mike Wait SC said that timetable was “ambitious”, but noted the parties were in negotiations to ensure the matter proceeded promptly.
Justice Sandi McDonald adjourned the case until January, when a hearing date will be set.
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Originally published as AFLW Crows premiership player Deni Varnhagen challenges SA Covid-19 rules, vaccine mandate, in Supreme Court
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