(LifeSiteNews) — A German court ruled on Tuesday that the restrictions on leaving your home during the first lockdown in March 2020 in the German state of Bavaria were disproportionate and “a serious interference with fundamental rights.”
The Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig ruled that “[t]he regulations of the Bavarian ‘Infection Protection Measures Ordinance’ of March 27, 2020, as amended by the ordinance of March 31, 2020 (BayIfSMV), on leaving one’s own home was not compatible with the principle of proportionality.”
In its ruling, the court also stated that “[t]he prohibition to leave one’s home to spend time outdoors” was “a serious interference with the fundamental rights of the aggrieved party.”
According to the lockdown regulation that was put in place in Bavaria in March of 2022, leaving one’s home was only allowed if there were “valid reasons” to do so. Acceptable reasons included “sports and exercise.”
It was not permitted, however, to “spend time outdoors alone or exclusively with members of one’s household,” meaning that it was also forbidden to sit outside alone on a park bench and read a book, for example.
READ: Lockdowns are the ‘single biggest mistake in public health history’: Stanford medical professor
Since the “valid reasons” imposed on leaving the home were so “narrowly defined,” the court decided that they were disproportionate, as it determined that spending time alone outside or with members of your household would not contribute to the spread of the novel coronavirus.
According to the court’s ruling, a measure that is “less burdensome” to the exercise of individuals’ fundamental rights ought to have been implemented.
The court added that the ban on leaving one’s home would have been proportionate if it “would not have prohibited spending time outdoors alone or exclusively with members of one’s household.”
This latest ruling is part of a long list of court decisions regarding the illegality of restrictive COVID-related measures. A court in Spain, for instance, ruled that the lockdown in March 2020 was “unconstitutional,” and the Austrian Constitutional Court also declared that multiple COVID ordinances violated the country’s constitution.
Meanwhile, studies continue to suggest that COVID-related lockdowns were more damaging to the health and wellbeing of citizens, contrary to their purported aim, with one research group finding in June 2021 that excess mortality directly resulted from isolation orders.