A legal challenge to South Australia's COVID 19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers has been dismissed by the Supreme Court in Adelaide.
AFLW inactive Deni Varnhagen led the challenge against the mandate after she lost her nursing jobs last year because she was not vaccinated against the disease.
Ms Varnhagen and fellow nurse Courtney Millington challenged the mandates that were legislated by the Emergency Management Act, but as their case was coming to an end, the state government revoked the laws in May this year.
The vaccine mandate on healthcare workers was enforced by the government by making changes to the South Australian Public Health Amendment Act.
Justice Judy Hughes said that the proceedings were confronted with a significant event because the laws underpinning the challenge no longer existed.
The next week, the government and the police commissioner Grant Stevens applied to the court for the case to be thrown out because the mandate was no longer enforceable under the Emergency Management Act.
The vaccine mandate was constitutionally invalid, and lawyers for the two nurses argued that it was constitutionally invalid, but Justice Hughes allowed the government's application for the case to be dismissed, agreeing that it lacked utility, which meant the constitutional issue could not continue.
Justice Hughes found that the Amendment Act is not invalid because Ms Varnhagen and Ms Millington have not established that it is invalid.
Lawyers for nurses said they would appeal the decision to the Court of Appeal.
Lawyer Stuart Lindsay said that there was no decision about the strength or otherwise of our application.
The hearing of our application ended because the state government brought in legislation that I say was designed to close these proceedings down in May of this year.
Ms Varnhagen, who has been a registered nurse for seven years, was working in the intensive care unit at Flinders Medical Centre and as an anaesthetic and recovery nurse at Glenelg Day Surgery.
Ms Varnhagen told the court that she was not able to make an informed decision about getting vaccinated in relation to the effectiveness or safety of the vaccines.
She said she was aware of her personal circumstances as a healthy, young female of child-bearing age. She believes that I am being coerced into doing so because I am being coerced into doing so in order to keep my employment.
Her fellow applicant - Ms Millington - has been a registered nurse for 17 years and worked at the Women's and Children's Hospital and Healthcare Australia.
After she was told she had to be vaccinated to continue working, she had one COVID- 19 vaccine dose, but said she felt pain and sought an exemption from the mandate, but it was not granted.
Varnhagen's time on Adelaide's inactive list was extended in June after she fell pregnant.