Germany's Employer-based C-19 Vaxx Mandate is Headed to the Supreme Court
Courtesy of a decision by the Lower Saxon Administrative Court, the recently-disclosed 'RKI Files' have already had legal consequences
And now something important has happened in Germany: yesterday, in an Osnabrück court room, a registered nurse’s suit against the so-called ‘sectoral vaccination obligation’ (sektorale Impfpflicht) was heard.
I’ll let the Lower Saxon Administrative Court’s media spokes-minions do the ‘splainin’ here (translation, ad-hoc commentary, and emphases mine):
Osnabrück Administrative Court to hear a nursing assistant’s appeal against a ban on entering and working in the absence of proof of vaccination or recovery on 3 September 2024
The plaintiff is challenging a ban on entering and working on the basis of Section 20a (5) sentence 3 of the Infection Protection Act (Infektionsschutzgesetz, as amended on 18 March 2022), which has since expired.
She was employed as a nursing assistant at Christliches Krankenhaus Quakenbrück in 2022. The defendant, the district of Osnabrück, requested the plaintiff on the basis of Section 20a (5) sentence 1 IfSG to submit proof of immunity, either proof of vaccination, proof of recovery, or a medical certificate stating that she could not be vaccinated against the Sars-Cov-2 coronavirus [in other words: the employer imposed a vaccination mandate because the nurse worked, well, in a hospital]. As the plaintiff did not respond to this, the defendant prohibited her from working as a care assistant by decision of 7 November 2022. The regulation was limited in time until 31 December 2022 [so, the nurse who’s suing her former employer was to be furloughed].
Oral arguments will be heard on 3 September 2024 at 10:45 a.m. This will also deal with the question of whether Section 20a IfSG in the version of 18 March 2022 was compatible with Article 2 (2) sentence 1 and Article 12 (1) of the Basic Law and whether the proceedings will be suspended in order to refer this question to the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe.
Prof. Dr Lars Schaade, President of the Robert Koch Institute and at the time head of the Corona Crisis Unit, has been subpoenaed as a witness for the hearing on the basis of a corresponding decision by the Chamber to take evidence. The Federal Ministry of Health (BMG) granted Prof. Schaade permission to testify under civil service law. The examination of the witness will focus, among other things, on the understanding of individual text passages of the so-called ‘RKI protocols’. [thus, the RKI Files are entering the courts]
As the hearing of the Administrative Court is the first nationwide in which the published protocols of the RKI crisis team will be the subject matter, a larger media rush and increased public interest can be expected. The limited number of seats in the courtroom will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
Translated from the bureaucratese German rendered into English, a (former) nurse is suing her employer over the so-called sectoral vaccination mandate imposed in late 2022.
This is important due to the publication, courtesy of both Multipolar’s Paul Schreyer as well as the leaked so-called ‘RKI Files’, which we discussed earlier this year:
There was a bit of a delay as the FOIA’ed RKI Files were quite heavily redacted, which led to quite a bit of speculation who was ‘hiding’ behind the blacked-out passages. Eventually, a fully un-redacted version was ‘leaked’.
And here’s some legacy (!) media reporting about what transpired in Osnabrück yesterday, courtesy of the Bild Zeitung (4 Sept. 2024).
Highest Court To Decide: Are Sectoral Vaccination Mandates Unconstitutional?
What a hammer of a judgement with respect to Covid vaccination obligation for nursing and healthcare staff! The Osnabrück Administrative Court has ruled that the facility-based vaccination requirement is not constitutional. A nursing assistant had filed a lawsuit.
In the view of the Osnabrück judges, the compulsory vaccination of nursing staff violated the fundamental right to physical integrity and freedom of occupation.
Now the Federal Constitutional Court must clarify the question: was the Infection Protection Act of 18 March 2022 compatible with the Basic Law?
Judges used RKI Files for the first time
At the end of April 2022, the judges in Karlsruhe declared the mandatory nursing vaccination law to be legal. However, the administrative court in Osnabrück announced that the independence of official decision-making must now be called into question.
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) should have informed the Federal Ministry of Health of its own accord about new findings from science and research.
This is evident from the minutes of the RKI’s Covid-19 crisis team that are now available. At the administrative court hearing on Tuesday, the published minutes of the RKI crisis team were also used for the first time in court.
The judges reached their decision after analysing the minutes and hearing the RKI President Lars Schaade, who was summoned as a witness. The head of the authority was head of the coronavirus crisis team in 2022.
Nursing assistant was not allowed to enter hospital
The plaintiff had worked as a nursing assistant in a hospital in Quakenbrück in 2022. The district of Osnabrück had banned her from entering the hospital and continuing to work there on the basis of the Infection Protection Act at the time.
The woman had not provided any proof that she had been vaccinated against coronavirus or that she had recovered, nor a certificate stating that she could not be vaccinated. This ban on entering the hospital and working there has now been suspended by the administrative court.
Bottom Lines
It is an old adage that the proverbial wheels of justice are very slow-moving.
In this case, though, with the RIK Files being available since spring (only), it looks lightning-fast to me.
I think this is a very momentous moment for the anti-Covid movements, but it’s far from sure that the Constitutional Court will strike down the vaxx mandate.
Just imagine, for a moment, that they do—that would be a ruling that will be heard everywhere, and perhaps the dams that are (barely) holding back the tide right now might be burst.
This is also why I think the most likely outcome will be something like, ‘even though this looks bad™, even Karl Lauterbach is only human’. Moreover, imagine what such a ruling would do to the currently-governing coalition under Mr. Scholz.
And then there’s this curious piece of history: the original German Vaccination Mandate (Impfgesetz) of 1874:
Instituted to combat smallpox, it envisioned mandatory vaccination until and unless, according to Title 1, that ‘every schoolchild who could provide a doctor’s certificate of recovery…is exempt’.
Hitler, referring to the ‘necessity of vaccination for the military in the event of a future war’ kept the law on the books—as did both German states during the Cold War (it was abrogated before the Cold War ended).
The Covid vaxx mandate, which narrowly failed in the Bundestag, may soon get its day in court; until then, we’ll have to wait and see.