Saxon Higher Admin. Court Upholds Most Covid Ordinances, Citing RKI 'Evidence™'
Thus the continued decline of the rule of law: the RKI took political orders, but the courts continue to rely on its 'expertise™' to cement into place a new order
Translation, emphases, and [snark] mine.
Covid Emergency Ordinance: ‘Disproportionate Intervention’
Via MDR, 21 Nov. 2024 [source]
Neither worship nor pastoral care, the church closed—this is what it sometimes looked like for the faithful during the coronavirus pandemic, which has been criticised to this day. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony also complied with the requirements of the Corona Emergency Ordinance [orig. Corona-Notverordnung] at the time, but in February 2022 it also initiated a judicial review procedure as it considered some of the measures to be disproportionate. Following a judgement by the Bautzen Higher Administrative Court [orig. Oberverwaltungsgericht], it now sees itself vindicated.
The Bautzen Higher Administrative Court has declared the provisions of a coronavirus emergency ordinance from 2021 to be unlawful because they unlawfully placed limits on the exercise of freedom of religion. This was announced by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony on Thursday with reference to the reasons for the court decision of 24 August 2024, which have now been received [there is much more to report, and I’ll address these issues below].
Corona Emergency Ordinance: ‘Disproportionate Interference’
According to the Corona Emergency Ordinance of 19 November 2021, pastors should check without exception whether people who seek help, advice and spiritual support from them in a pastoral consultation have been vaccinated, tested or recovered [I’ll just mention the utter absurdity here: vaccine passports—medical documents—should be shared with a priest, and because these medical documents are only valid in combination with a gov’t-issued ID, the priests were also obliged to ‘check papers’: this is doubly illegal, once because of medical privacy/doctor-patient confidentiality and secondly due to only police being legally permitted to ‘check ID’]. The regional church now sees its legal opinion confirmed that this was disproportionate because it meant that pastoral care was not possible in acute emergency situations, such as with the dying or seriously ill.
The court also found that limiting the number of participants at funerals to a maximum of 20 people was unlawful because a much larger number of participants was permitted at other events.
OVG Bautzen: 3-G Principle Permissible
However, the court found another provision of the Corona Emergency Ordinance to be permissible. Allowing access to church events only for vaccinated, tested, or recovered persons—i.e. according to the ‘3-G rule’—was compatible with religious freedom [mixed bag of things, as this means that the court upheld the principle of vaccine passport checks: what a shitshow].
The Saxon regional church had recommended to its parishes in accordance with the ordinance that all visitors, regardless of their vaccination status, should be offered a test directly on site in order to avoid exclusion and stigmatisation [oh, well, more ‘evidence™’ of the ‘efficacy™’ of the modRNA poison/death juice, isn’t it?], emphasised the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony in its statement on the ruling. In addition, the parishes of the regional church were advised during the coronavirus pandemic to keep churches and chapels open for individual visits wherever possible, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony added.
Reasons for the Judicial Review
On 24 February 2022, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony applied for a judicial review of several provisions of the Saxon Corona Emergency Ordinance of 19 November 2021 in a judicial review procedure. The ruling of Saxony’s highest administrative court was issued on 24 August 2024, followed later by the statement of reasons, on which the Saxon state church has now commented.
Bottom Lines
Instead of offering my opinions right away, I shall point to a few passages of the ruling first:
The court rules that § 9 para. 1 with regard to services offered that serve pastoral purposes and § 1Ba of the Ordinance of the Saxon State Ministry of Social Affairs and Social Cohesion on the Regulation of Emergency Measures to Break the Fourth Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 Welle…were ineffective. All other claims are rejected.
Costs of these proceedings are to be borne to 1/3 by the plaintiff and 2/3 by the defendant.
No appeal is possible.
This is such a weird ruling: the plaintiff won but has to contribute to paying the court.
Keep in mind that the ruling merely determined that churches could have stayed open, but all the other mandates—however hilariously stupid and inefficient—were actually upheld by the court. These include, as listed:
‘contact tracing’ (collection of personal data, incl. vaccination status)
safety, or ‘hygiene concepts’ (social distancing of at least 1.5m, according to the ruling)
mask mandates
limitations on freedom of assembly
obligation to have a vaccine passport
The money paragraph in the ruling appears to be no. 12, which reads:
Disproportionality also results from the fact that the ordinance indiscriminately covers all forms of pastoral care close to the body without sufficiently distinguishing between different forms and needs. For example, there is no exception for acute situations or circumstances that make it impossible to fulfil the duties.
What the gov’t proscribed, in other words, isn’t merely limitations on freedom of religion, but they also outlawed following one’s conscious.
This is both Orwellian and outright evil as the gov’t mandated what to think before acting.
This ruling dovetails, in a rather bad way, with the sentencing of judge Anna K. who permitted the administration of last rites and faced disciplinary measures:
If that wasn’t bad enough, the court also added insult to injury:
[Para. 13] Furthermore, the disproportionality also results from the fact that the regulation is indiscriminately linked to the presentation of proof and the contact registration itself. This would also exclude people who have been vaccinated and boostered but who may not be able to provide proof at the time of need.
You see, you can’t just rule that these ordinances affected the unwashed (unvaxxed) rabble, but if applied consistently, it would also affect those who took the modRNA poison/death juices.
There are furthermore frequent references to the Robert Koch Institute’s observations—which have been proven, in court, to have been driven by politics and not empirical evidence:
It is hard to read the ‘arguments’ by the court and not come up with serious questions regarding the evidentiary base of all of this.
In a perfect world, it would be impossible for the court to pick and chose part of the plaintiff’s claims while refuting all the others citing disproven and highly questionable official ‘evidence™’.
The rule of law in Germany is on life support, and it’s going to take a miracle to resuscitate it:
In many ways, the rule of holes applies here, too, although it is evident that the powers-that-be in Germany have yet to stop digging.
German law seems determined to in effect reduce itself to "Ego sic dico"?