The Supreme Administrative Court of the Czech Republic has ordered the abolition of vaccine passports for restaurants, hotels, and other venues, arguing that the measure is tantamount to vaccination coercion, and therefore not legal.
The court has given the Czech government seven days to reply to the ruling, which would remove all vaccine passport requirements from the country’s restaurants, bars, clubs and hotels once that period expires.
“The aim of the measure cannot be to indirectly force citizens to vaccinate. This would make voluntary vaccination mandatory through an extraordinary measure because unvaccinated people would have no choice but to be vaccinated if they wanted to live normally,” Supreme Administrative Court Judge Petr Mikeš said, influential Czech news outlet Seznam Zprávy reports.
Fewer Czechs Dying of Coronavirus Despite Higher Case Numbers https://t.co/fTrXVgNcdF
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) January 26, 2022
Judge Mikeš ruled that the government’s pandemic laws do not allow for the specific regulation of restaurants, clubs and hotels and that measures would only be justified if the government could prove the entire country was at risk of the Wuhan coronavirus or if the government were to enact a state of emergency and use emergency powers to force venues to accept the vaccine passport.
“The Supreme Administrative Court has already stated in the past that the Ministry of Health has no basis for restricting this type of establishment in the so-called Pandemic Act, unless it is technical measures, such as the use of disinfection or the placement of seating,” Mikeš stated.
The case is not the first time a court has overturned government pandemic measures, including vaccine passport policies. In Spain, the Basque High Court ruled against the introduction of the vaccine passport for certain venues in November, arguing the measure was unjustified.
Despite the ruling, the vaccine passport was later approved after the case was taken to the Spanish supreme court in December.
Just months prior in August, the Spanish Supreme Court ruled that Spain’s 2020 strict lockdown policies had been unconstitutional but claimed that businesses and people were not eligible to take the government to court to sue for monetary damages incurred during the lockdowns.
Finland's Prime Minister Sanna Marin has announced that the country will be lifting all Wuhan coronavirus restrictions by mid-February as the country starts easing some restrictions this week. https://t.co/ACwJZuE0vl
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) February 1, 2022
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