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The Queensland government has failed for a sixth time to have a Christian’s religious freedom case against COVID-19 injection mandates thrown out of court, with a tribunal member describing part of the government’s argument as “difficult to understand”.

The applicant, Brisbane legal professional Jayden Beale, has spent almost four years fighting to bring his case to trial.

Member Wilson of the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT) dismissed the government’s application on 17 June, rejecting its core argument that a Christian’s own reading of the Bible does not qualify as a protected religious belief.

The government had argued that Beale’s objection to the injection mandates was merely his “subjective interpretation” of Scripture. In response, Member Wilson wrote, “It is difficult to see how any individual reading of and adherence to the Bible can be other than subjective.”

In his statement of evidence filed with the tribunal, Beale cited 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 as the basis for his objection: his body, he wrote, is “the temple of the Holy Ghost” and not the government’s to control.

As reported by The Daily Declaration in May, Crown Law, acting for the state, filed the strike-out application on 24 October last year. It argued that Beale’s position amounted to “his subjective interpretation [of] parts of the Bible that he relies upon to support his personal choice to avoid vaccination against COVID-19.”

That reading, Crown Law submitted, could not count as religious belief unless it followed a “particular standard or code of conduct” laid down by a specific church — a test it said his two supporting pastors’ statements failed to meet.

The case, first filed with the Queensland Human Rights Commission in December 2022, now proceeds toward a full trial.

The Tribunal’s Reasoning

At the hearing on 30 April, Member Wilson tested the government’s “code of conduct” argument directly. He put a hypothetical to the government’s barrister, Mr Troy Spence: if a pastor told a congregation from the pulpit not to be vaccinated, and a member followed that instruction, would that count as religious belief? Spence said it would need to be shown that the instruction fell “within an accepted canon of code of the relevant religion as an objective test”.

Wilson pressed further, asking what an “objective interpretation” of Scripture would even look like. Spence maintained that Beale’s case rested on “his own individual interpretation” of the Bible rather than an established church doctrine, and that this could not qualify as religious activity under the Anti-Discrimination Act 1991.

In his written reasons, Wilson rejected the logic behind that argument. He noted the High Court’s observation in Adelaide Company of Jehovah’s Witnesses Incorporated v The Commonwealth (1943) 67 CLR 116, citing Latham CJ’s finding that “each person chooses the content of his own religion” and that courts should not disqualify beliefs as non-religious “on some a priori basis”.

Those observations, Wilson noted, “were expressly approved by Wilson and Deane JJ” in the later High Court authority Church of the New Faith v Commissioner of Pay-Roll Tax (Vic).

Wilson also distinguished Beale’s case from Drage v Gold Coast Hospital and Health Service, a 2025 Supreme Court decision the government relied upon. In that case, he noted, the applicant “held personal views about the facts associated with vaccination” rather than a genuinely held religious belief — a different situation from Beale’s.

The tribunal member stopped short of ruling on the underlying legal question.

“The relevant construction of the AD Act is also a complex legal question,” he wrote, finding that “why the applicant rejected the vaccines, and his beliefs in doing so, are questions of fact” that should be tested at a full hearing, with witnesses subject to cross-examination.

Wilson also told Spence at the hearing that the strike-out bid was “a wholly inappropriate way to try and pursue these arguments.”

Beale told The Daily Declaration, “it was refreshing to see a judicial officer confront government lawyers when they are acting inappropriately,” and described the government’s application itself as an “attack on religious freedom and the fundamental right of a citizen to have their case heard.”

A Reformation Argument

Among the evidence before the tribunal was a statement from Pastor Phil Mueller of the Independent Lutheran Churches in Queensland, tendered in support of Beale’s case.

Mueller’s statement, read into the hearing record, argued that “the supreme authority or canons of conduct for faith and life of the Christian religion is the Bible,” and that any denomination’s own decrees “are never intended to have authority over the Scripture”.

Speaking to The Daily Declaration, Mueller said the government’s argument against Beale struck at the heart of Christian belief.

“The Bible is the very Word of God, given to us to make us wise to salvation and to show us the will of God for our lives,” he said.

Challenging a Christian’s right to order his life by Scripture, Mueller said, was “effectively attempting to make the government the authority over God, while in truth, according to God’s Word, the government itself is under God’s authority”.

Mueller drew a direct line to the Protestant Reformation. “The government’s argument came straight out of pre-reformation church history, when the church organisation attempted to order every aspect of a person’s faith and life according to the church’s will,” he said, adding that the pre-reformation church had “kept the Bible from the common people by outlawing any translations of the Bible into the common languages of the people”.

Mueller also pushed back on the idea — raised by both the government and the tribunal — that reading the Bible is merely a subjective pursuit. “The Bible is subjective only in so far as the reader takes from what it says and applies this in his life,” he noted. “Its content, however, is objective, as it is the very Word of God given to us ‘for training in righteousness’” — a reference to 2 Timothy 3:16.

Asked why he supported Beale, Mueller said he saw in the government’s submissions “a sinister precedence to undermine the authority of God and His Word to rule in the lives of His people — and that is a red flag to any Christian, especially a Protestant Christian.”

“The word of God must always hold the position of highest authority in the believers’ life,” he said, “and that must never be undermined by anything.”

The Road to Trial

Jayden Beale told The Daily Declaration that getting his evidence heard has come at a cost. “I have had to go to extreme lengths to get this case to a trial,” he said. “Effectively, every six months throughout this case I have had to prepare and file serious legal submissions defending my right to a trial.”

“It has been very taxing on me,” he said, “and it just demonstrates how much the State can continuously use its resources against a litigant to try to have inconvenient cases tossed from court.”

QCAT’s own published timeframes put anti-discrimination matters at roughly 80 weeks — about 18 months — to finalisation. “In my case, I am now almost four years into the proceeding,” Beale said, “and the government is still refusing to file its evidence and they have effectively disclosed zero documents to me despite multiple requests over a number of years.”

Beale said the government now “needs to prepare for trial, despite there being no indication of whether any experts from the medical profession are willing to defend government’s vaccine mandates.” He said he expected the government may attempt to strike out some of his 13 filed expert reports before trial — a proceeding that he estimates is unlikely to occur before next year.

The Daily Declaration approached Queensland Health for comment, as it did when this case was first reported in May. Both times, a department spokesperson gave a similar response.

In May, a spokesperson said it “would be inappropriate to comment on matters before the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal,” adding that “mandatory COVID-19 vaccination requirements were a vital part of the state’s plan to protect Queenslanders.”

Asked again this month, a spokesperson said it “would be inappropriate to comment on an ongoing legal proceeding” — before repeating, word for word, that “mandatory COVID-19 vaccination requirements were a vital part of the State’s plan to protect Queenslanders.” Neither response addressed the tribunal’s specific findings.

Beale said the mandates reflected a wider failure during the pandemic.

“During the COVID-19 period, people worshipped the government like it was their God,” he said. “People lived on their knees during the period obeying each government decree and announcement like it was a message from the heavens.”

“I work full-time for the government in my private employment,” Beale said. “We are not God. We are supposed to serve the public, not have the public serve us.”

“But this relationship was completely flipped during COVID-19,” he added, “and I believe the government failed the general public in that regard.”