Quick reckons. This is an important but pretty narrow ruling because (a) it related to the special threshold for vax mandates applicable to the Police and Defence Force (ie "continuity of service" etc); and /1
(b) because of some messiness, the govt didn't marshal the evidence the judge expected to demonstrably prove that threshold was met - esp given the indirect limitation on folks' rights. /2
Importantly, the case wasn't about vax mandates more generally and whether they were demonstrably effective in the fight against Covid-19 - ie, this wasn't a case where public health evidence and related human rights calculus. /3
Rather it's about whether govt had adequately proven logistical disruption would be avoided if a vax mandate was deployed in defence and policing sectors. Effectively, the court said, on this point (before min and ct), the evidence was sketchy at best. /4
PPS Here is the conclusion from the same judge in a an earlier workplace vax mandate challenge (in Nov 2021), where he ruled in that context that particular vax mandate was Bill of Rights-consistent.
Four Aviation Security Service Employees v Min of C19 Response [2021] NZHC 3012
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A fun and rich day at the NZ Centre for Public Law at @VicUniWgtn, with our regular (but today virtual) Govt Law - Year in Review symposium. Over 250 folk joining to chew the fat about developments over past year (incl goings-on around our own places as we speak!) #NZCPLgovtlaw
Our day kicks off with a superb keynote from Prof Claudia Geiringer (@GeiringerC): "Reimagining the NZ Bill of Rights Act: an internalised constraint on administrative power" - a taster from her forthcoming book. #NZCPLgovtlaw
And @Publicwrongs does a sterling job running through a very busy year in judicial review. 🤓 #NZCPLgovtlaw
I think Lady Chambers is quite mistaken about the (so-called diluted) role the Bill of Rights Act has played in the pandemic (on @CheckpointRNZ and @nzherald).
Rather than the government being blasé about human rights and there being an absence of debate etc, the justification calculus has been at the forefront of government decision-making - as section 5 of the Bill of Rights Act demands.
It's possible to care deeply about human rights and also accept that a case has been made out for some rights to be limited in the public good and protection of other rights (rights to health and life etc).
There is still a dispute about whether the Council’s CCTO was performing a “public function” under s3(b) such that the Bill of Rights Act applies. In the Supremes, there was a lot of argument about how the Ransfield test/indicia apply in this context.
FWIW, I think Ransfield is methodologically dangerous. It approaches the question of public function as if there is some intrinsic truth about what functions are intrinsically public or governmental.
Grounded Kiwis judicial review challenge to New Zealand's managed isolation and quarantine regime -- arguing that it unjustifiably breaches the right to return in s18(2) of the Bill of Rights Act -- is being heard by the High Court today.
I have been granted permission to trainspot and tweet (subject to a 10min delay on reports and reckons). 🤓
To be clear, it is a constitutional disgrace that the legislation mandating this vaccination regime is being passed urgently this week, without provision for prior/adequate consultation on the legislative framework.
Whether you support the new Covid protection framework (which I do) or not, legislative change seriously implicating rights like this needs much more time to breathe, to be interrogated and for its legitimacy to be built through dialogue.