Austria’s Constitutional Court has ruled that it was unlawful for the government to ban unvaccinated people from hair salons and barbers and also declared that a ban on entering cultural institutions was unlawful.
The Constitutional Court found the government’s restriction on unvaccinated people regarding barbers and hair salons was unlawful as the Covid-19 Measures Act provided exemptions for people not vaccinated against the Wuhan coronavirus for basic needs, which the court stated included getting hair cut.
The court argued that the length of the restrictions also played a part but noted how the government extended restrictions numerous times to the point in which unvaccinated were denied access to a hairdresser for around eleven weeks, Kronen Zeitung reports.
The ruling is just the latest dismantling of Austria’s Wuhan coronavirus restriction policies and comes as the Constitutional Court ruled that a ban on the unvaccinated entering cultural institutions in the Autumn of last year, was also unlawful.
The court, however, said that the law itself was not the issue, but rather the fact that exemptions existed for churches and religious institutions and that cultural institutions should be treated equally and establish their own rules as well.
This week, Austria lifted nearly all of its remaining Wuhan coronavirus restrictions, including mask mandates. People who test positive for the virus will also now be allowed outside as long as they wear an FFP2 mask while they do so.
Some restrictions do remain in place, such as a ban on anyone infected with the virus from eating or drinking outside of their isolation area as they would need to remove their masks.
The new rules are a massive u-turn for Austria, which was one of the only countries in Europe pushing for mandatory vaccination for all adults earlier this year, threatening to hand down fines to anyone caught unvaccinated.
The mandatory vaccine law was first suspended and later scrapped in June by the government, which claimed that the situation regarding the pandemic had changed and the law was no longer needed.
Health Minister of Austria Johannes Rauch also noted that the policy had caused “deep rifts” in Austrian society and the country was no longer in “disaster mode” regarding the virus.