Djokovic and Australian Government Argue Visa in Court

Novak Djokovic is challenging the Australian government one last time in hopes of salvaging his chances to defend his Australian Open title despite his refusal to be vaccinated against Covid-19.

A panel of three judges was hearing arguments from Australian immigration officials and Djokovic, the top-ranked men’s tennis player in the world and the winner of nine men’s singles titles at the Australian Open, in Djokovic’s final effort to stay in the country.

The judges — whose decision will be final — are weighing whether the immigration minister, Alex Hawke, was within his rights to revoke Djokovic’s visa for public health reasons, a significant maneuver in a twist-filled saga that escalated soon after Djokovic’s plane touched down in Melbourne on Jan. 5.

Australia requires all foreign visitors to be vaccinated, but grants exemptions in limited cases. Djokovic’s visa was canceled by immigration officials after an airport interview about his medical exemption, but it was reinstated by a judge on procedural grounds before the latest move by Hawke to keep Djokovic from staying. Again, Djokovic challenged.

Hawke canceled Djokovic’s visa out of concern that the tennis star’s presence in Australia could stoke anti-vaccine sentiment and lead to “civil unrest.” Rallies against vaccination mandates and pandemic restrictions in Australia have increased in recent months, sometimes turning violent, though nearly 80 percent of Australia’s population is fully vaccinated.

Djokovic’s lawyer, Nicholas Wood, argued on Sunday that Hawke, in making that decision, had failed to consider what effect deporting him could have.

If Djokovic had his visa canceled despite Hawke recognizing he was a man of good standing, and was “expelled from the country, precluded from playing in the tournament and impaired in his career, it’s quite obvious that in itself might act to generate anti-vaccination sentiment,” Wood said.

Hawke’s lawyer, Stephen Lloyd, has telegraphed that he will argue that the minister did in fact take this into account, and that the onus was on Djokovic’s legal team to prove that Hawke did not consider that circumstance, which they cannot.

Wood argued that Hawke did not have enough evidence to make a determination that Djokovic had expressed anti-vaccination sentiments, relying on quotes cited in a news article that Djokovic had made before coronavirus vaccinations were available.

Hawke also did not have evidence to say that Djokovic’s mere presence in Australia could cause unrest, Wood argued. Anti-vaccination sentiment and activism had been triggered by the government’s vaccination mandates and by its decision to cancel Djokovic’s visa, he said, “not simply by letting Mr. Djokovic play tennis.”

Ahead of the Sunday hearing, photographers crowded around a car transporting Djokovic from a hotel where he had been detained to his lawyer’s office.

The panel was granted by Justice David O’Callaghan on Saturday at the request of Djokovic’s lawyers and in spite of opposition by a lawyer for Australia’s immigration minister. Because the hearing is before a full panel of judges, it cannot be appealed.

Judge James Allsop reiterated that ground rule at the start of the hearing Sunday. He said the decision was made to hear the matter before a full panel of judges because of the significance of the matter — to Djokovic personally, and because Hawke had said in his decision that it went to the heart of the “very preservations of life and health of many members of the community and to the maintenance of the health system of Australia.”

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The dispute is running up against the start of the Australian Open, a Grand Slam championship event that is one of the biggest tournaments of the year in tennis along with the French Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. Djokovic, the top seed in the men’s singles tournament, drew a first-round match for Monday against a fellow Serbian player, Miomir Kecmanovic, but the match schedule has not been finalized with Djokovic’s status in doubt.

In addition to chasing his 10th Australian Open men’s singles title, Djokovic is hoping to break a tie with Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer for the most Grand Slam championships. They each have 20.

In April 2020, with the pro tennis tour suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic, Novak Djokovic took part in a Facebook Live chat with some fellow Serbian athletes. During their conversation, Djokovic, famous for his punishing training regimen, abstemious diet and fondness for New Age beliefs, said he was “opposed to vaccination” and “wouldn’t want to be forced by someone to take a vaccine in order to be able to travel.”

“But if it becomes compulsory, what will happen? I will have to make a decision,” he said.

More than a year and a half later, Djokovic’s decision to seek a medical exemption to the Australian Open’s vaccine requirement has become a debacle for tennis — and one of the most bizarre episodes yet served up by the pandemic. Djokovic, 34, has done potentially irreparable harm to his own image. It is a bitter twist for a player who has long craved the adoration lavished on his chief rivals, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, and it is a sad coda to what is widely considered the greatest era in the history of men’s tennis.

Djokovic finds himself at the center of a global controversy that turns on some of the most divisive issues raised by the pandemic, in particular the question of individual freedom versus collective responsibility.

Djokovic’s refusal to capitulate to an Australian government that has sought to bar him “in the public interest” because he is unvaccinated has made him a martyr in the eyes of some right-wing populists and those who oppose vaccines.

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While Djokovic was awaiting a court hearing on his entering the country, Nigel Farage, the far-right British politician and media figure who spearheaded the Brexit campaign, was in Belgrade, Serbia, expressing solidarity with the tennis star’s family. Djokovic’s father compared his son to Jesus Christ and Spartacus and hailed him as “the leader of the free world.” In Melbourne, a raucous crowd of Djokovic supporters chanted “Novak” and clashed with the police.

All of this is a strange turn of events for an athlete who has often been accused of trying too hard to win the world’s affection and who commands enormous respect within his sport. Still, Djokovic has also has some more troubling aspects to his public persona — a spiritual dabbler with a weakness for what some regard as quackery.

— Michael Steinberger

It is a delicate situation for the remaining players at the Australian Open, l’affaire Novak Djokovic. A fluid situation, too, with a federal court hearing scheduled for Sunday in Melbourne to try to determine whether Djokovic, the world’s No. 1-ranked men’s tennis player, will have his visa restored and be allowed to defend his Australian Open title, despite not having been vaccinated against the coronavirus.

On Saturday, as the cameras rolled and Djokovic returned to detention at the Park Hotel, players competing at the Australian Open went on with a day of news conferences without the reigning champion at Melbourne Park. Normally, he would have been included in the event — where players were alone on the dais and members of the news media were socially distanced — but Djokovic was not interviewed on Saturday given the situation.

But he was certainly still present — his case a feature of nearly every interview, as his fellow athletes played the question-and-answer game before the start of the Australian Open on Monday (with or without Djokovic).

Naomi Osaka, the Japanese star who has often been one of the sport’s most outspoken players on social issues, was more circumspect this time, saying the decision was ultimately up to the government and not to tennis players, but suggesting that she understood how the scrutiny felt.

“I know what it’s like to kind of be in his situation in a place that you’re getting asked about that person, to just see comments from other players,” she said. “It’s not the greatest thing. Just trying to keep it positive.”

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But Rafael Nadal, one of Djokovic’s longtime rivals, was willing to play closer to the lines.

“I tell you one thing,” Nadal said. “It’s very clear that Novak Djokovic is one of the best players of the history, without a doubt. But there is no one player in history that’s more important than the event, no? The player stays and then goes, and other players are coming.

“Even Roger, Novak, myself, Bjorn Borg, who was amazing at his times, tennis keeps going,” he said, referring to Roger Federer. “Australian Open is more important than any player. If he’s playing finally, OK. If he’s not playing, the Australian Open will be a great Australian Open.”

Novak Djokovic, the top player in men’s tennis and its leading vaccine skeptic, had his visa canceled for the second time by the government of Australia, where he had arrived Jan. 5 hoping to defend his Australian Open title. The tournament begins on Monday.

Here’s a look at how the standoff has unfolded:

A surprise exemption gave Djokovic an apparent chance to avoid Australia’s tough vaccination rules.

Djokovic has won the last three Australian Open men’s singles championships, and a record nine in his career. But he has received scrutiny for his unscientific beliefs, including his support for a claim that positive emotions can purify toxic water or food, and he has shunned coronavirus vaccines.

Last year, the Australian Open announced that participants in this month’s tournament would have to be fully vaccinated, in line with requirements for entering the country. Djokovic’s participation was seen as unlikely until he announced Jan. 4 that he would play after receiving an exemption. It was later learned that his exemption was based on a recent coronavirus infection.

The federal government stopped Djokovic at the border.

Djokovic was stopped at the airport in Melbourne late on Jan. 5 after flying from Spain via Dubai, United Arab Emirates. He was questioned for hours at the airport before being sent to a quarantine hotel.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia, who has faced criticism over the government’s Covid-19 response, announced that Djokovic’s entry had been denied because he was unvaccinated. Federal officials said that a previous coronavirus infection was not valid grounds for the vaccination exemption granted by Australian tennis officials and local authorities in Victoria, the state where the tournament is held.

Djokovic, who was taken to a quarantine hotel pending his departure, immediately filed a legal appeal.

Djokovic won an appeal, but questions soon arose.

On Monday, after Djokovic had spent five days at a hotel for refugees and asylum seekers, a judge ruled that he had been treated unfairly at the airport, denied a promised chance to contact his lawyers or Australian Open officials, and reinstated his visa.

But documents released as part of the legal proceedings raised questions about Djokovic’s actions.

Records showed that he took a coronavirus test at 1:05 p.m. on Dec. 16 in Belgrade, Serbia, and received the positive result seven hours later. But social media posts showed that he had attended two public events on the day he sought his test, and also a tennis event a day later in Belgrade, where he presented awards to children. And Franck Ramella, a reporter with the French sports newspaper L’Equipe, wrote this week that when he conducted an interview with Djokovic on Dec. 18, he did not know that the athlete had just tested positive.

Questions also arose over whether Djokovic had made a false statement on his entry form to Australia when he said that he had not traveled internationally in the 14 days before his flight from Spain. Social media posts showed him in Serbia on Christmas Day.

Djokovic acknowledged mistakes.

In a statement on Wednesday, Djokovic said he was not yet aware that he had tested positive when he attended the children’s event, and acknowledged that he had made a poor decision not to cancel the interview with the French journalist. He said that a member of his support team had made a “human error” when filling out his paperwork.

But the statement, which read as both a late request for leniency and an explanation for irresponsible behavior, may have come too late. By then, Australia’s immigration minister, Alex Hawke, was already giving serious consideration to using his powers to cancel the visa for the second time.

Australia’s immigration minister revoked Djokovic’s visa.

On Friday, Hawke said in a statement that he was canceling Djokovic’s visa on the grounds of “health and good order,” adding that it was in the public interest to do so. Djokovic’s lawyers quickly appealed, with the Australian Open starting on Monday and his ability to compete for a men’s record 21st Grand Slam title in jeopardy.

A three-judge panel agreed to hear the case.

Lawyers for Djokovic and the Australian government laid out their arguments in court documents ahead of a Sunday hearing.

Hawke told Djokovic’s lawyers in a letter filed with the court that he canceled Djokovic’s visa out of concern that the tennis star’s presence in Australia could stoke anti-vaccine sentiment and lead to “civil unrest.”

Djokovic’s lawyers argued that Hawke did not act rationally in that assessment. Nicholas Wood, one of the lawyers, said the minister did not take into account the impact of forcing the player out of the country.

The panel, granted by Justice David O’Callaghan on Saturday at the request of Djokovic’s lawyers, means that the court’s decision on the case cannot be appealed.

News Analysis

SYDNEY, Australia — What began as a power struggle between a defiantly unvaccinated tennis star and a prime minister seeking a distraction from his own pre-election missteps has turned into something far weightier: a public stand for pandemic rules and the collective good.

And the sinner of the moment is Novak Djokovic.

Australia — a proud “sporting nation” where the year’s first tennis Grand Slam begins on Monday — hemmed and hawed about Mr. Djokovic for more than a week. Australians didn’t much like how their government had summarily canceled Djokovic’s visa at the airport. After all their lockdown obedience and vaccine drives, they were also unhappy about the celebrity athlete’s effort to glide into the country while skirting a Covid vaccination mandate.

“As Meryl Streep might say, it’s complicated,” said Peter FitzSimons, an author and former professional rugby player.

But then came a stretch of extraordinary revelations that all but erased any popular ambivalence. Djokovic admitted that he had not isolated himself last month while he apparently suspected, and later confirmed, a Covid-19 infection. And he blamed his agent for a false statement on an immigration document that warned of harsh penalties for any errors.

With that, Australia’s leaders decided they had seen enough. On Friday, the country’s immigration minister canceled Djokovic’s visa for a second time, putting his bid to win a record 21st Grand Slam title in grave doubt. If Djokovic, the top-ranked men’s tennis player, does not successfully challenge the decision in court or decide to leave on his own, he will be detained and deported before competing.

In the final tally, a country far from the epicenters of Covid suffering, where sport is a revered forum for right and wrong, has become an enforcer of the collectivist values that the entire world has been struggling to maintain during the pandemic.

Novak Djokovic has said little publicly about why he has declined to be vaccinated against Covid, a decision at the heart of the Australian government’s decision to revoke his visa, now for a second time.

But while his views are out of step with the vast majority of people in Australia — where roughly 80 percent of the population is vaccinated — in his homeland of Serbia, skepticism of vaccination runs deep. Serbia has one of the lowest vaccination rates in Europe, with less than 50 percent of people having received two shots, according to the Our World in Data project at Oxford University.

Serbians can choose from a virtual vaccine bazaar, including Sinopharm from China, Sputnik from Russia and the AstraZeneca shot, developed in partnership with Britain’s Oxford University and the U.S. drug company Pfizer, which is referred to in Serbia as the American vaccine.

But as cases rise, getting vaccinated is an increasingly hard sell.

A year ago, lines at the Belgrade Fair — the main vaccine site in the capital — stretched for blocks and some 8,000 doses were being administered daily. Now medical staff are lucky if they inoculate 300 people in a day, said Dr. Milena Turubatovic, a primary care physician administering vaccine doses at the site.

A fan of Djokovic, she worried that the focus on his vaccine status was not helpful.

“I respect him highly, but do not agree with his attitude on vaccination,” she said. “And of course it has an impact.”

Over the course of the pandemic, many people in Serbia have come to view the virus as a part of life and become resistant to restrictions aimed at slowing its spread. While Serbia locked down like the rest of Europe during the first wave of infections, the suggestion of a renewed lockdown last winter was greeted with riots.

Since then, political leaders have been loath to reimpose or enforce restrictions. That was evident when President Aleksandar Vucic declined to criticize Djokovic even after the tennis star acknowledged he had failed to isolate after testing positive in December and made errors on a travel form submitted to the Australian authorities.

Though Djokovic’s stance may have hurt the government’s vaccination campaign, the president has continued to support him, protesting his detention in Australia and calling that country’s decision to keep him from playing “overkill.”

“When you can’t defeat someone on the court, then you do such things,” he said.

On Friday evening, Vucic went further, posting a message on Instagram that accused the Australian government of disrespecting not just Djokovic but all of Serbia.

“If you wanted to ban Novak Djokovic from winning the 10th trophy in Melbourne, why didn’t you return him immediately, why didn’t you tell him ‘it is impossible to obtain a visa?’” Mr. Vucic said, adding, “Why are you mistreating him? Why are you taking it out not only on him but also on his family and the whole nation?”

Novak Djokovic’s ordeal in Australia may presage other battles ahead as the attitudes of sporting bodies, health authorities and public opinion harden toward the non-vaccinated, even if they are glittering global sports stars.

While it is highly unlikely Djokovic, an outspoken vaccine skeptic, will find himself sequestered again in any other country over visa issues, his trouble in Melbourne is an indication of some of the resistance or obstacles he could face in the months ahead if he continues to try to travel the world without being vaccinated for Covid-19.

Governments are running out of forbearance, instituting or debating vaccine mandates, and some tennis officials are running out of patience, too. And the pace and direction of the coronavirus pandemic and its variants is unknown.

The next major events on the men’s tour after the Australian Open are the Masters 1000 events in March in Indian Wells, Calif., and Miami. But the United States now requires that visitors be fully vaccinated to travel to the country by plane unless they are U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents or traveling on a U.S. immigrant visa. Only limited exceptions apply, and it is unclear whether Djokovic would qualify for one or would even want to try to qualify for one after the Australian imbroglio.

The French Open, the year’s next Grand Slam tournament, begins in May and appears less problematic for him. Roxana Maracineanu, the French sports minister, told French national radio last week that she expected that Djokovic would be allowed to enter the country and compete if unvaccinated because of the health protocols that are planned for major international sporting events in France.

But in the same interview, Maracineanu emphasized that any athlete, French or foreign, who was a resident in France would be required to show proof of vaccination to have access to sports training facilities.

Some professional leagues have left loopholes in place, but they are also plugging gaps. Djokovic, who has long held nontraditional views on science, finds himself in the distinct minority, with more than 90 percent of the top 100 players on the ATP Tour now vaccinated.

In 2022, the tour will not require vaccinated players to take more than an initial test once they arrive at a tournament unless they develop symptoms. Unvaccinated players and team members will have to be tested regularly.

While Djokovic won in court on Monday, he has undoubtedly lost support in the court of public opinion. The backlash against him in Australia was amplified by his willful refusal for months to clarify his plans for the Open.

The pitched battle in Australia highlighted a new dynamic: Athletes once viewed favorably as iconoclasts are now encountering pushback when they want to play by different rules than everyone else.

“Limbo,” the former Australian Open tournament director Paul McNamee had said this week, “is the worst scenario for the tournament.”

Yet for days, the uncertainty of Novak Djokovic’s status had hung over the event. The decision on Friday to cancel his visa for the second time could yield some clarity. His plan to appeal that ruling will only extend it.

But coming when it did, a day after Djokovic was placed in the No. 1 spot in the men’s draw, the cancellation of his visa — if it is upheld — could force a reshuffling of the men’s bracket.

If Djokovic were to be kicked out of Australia, the draw for the men’s singles tournament would have to be reconfigured. According to Grand Slam rules, the No. 5 seed, Andrey Rublev, would move into Djokovic’s vacant slot in the draw. Rublev’s place at No. 5 would then be filled by another seed as part of a series of cascading changes.

But if Djokovic appeals and delays his departure, or if his withdrawal were to come after the order of play for opening day has been released, his place would be taken by a so-called lucky loser: a player who had lost in the qualifying tournament and then been drawn by lot to receive a newly open spot.

And instead of having Djokovic as the favorite to win his record 10th title, and 21st Grand Slam singles championship overall, the focus would shift to three of his most likely rivals for the trophy: the U.S. Open champion Daniil Medvedev; the Olympic champion Alexander Zverev; and the 20-time Grand Slam champion Rafael Nadal.

None of it, of course, is ideal for the Open.

“If Novak was going to be kicked out,” McNamee said, “the time to do it was before the draw.”