In the spring of 2020, spas in Estonia were either completely closed or subject to a 50 percent occupancy rule. In the summer of 2021, Mustamäe Elamus Spa went to court.

"After enduring these restrictions for a year, one may question the rationale behind their imposition. If you examine the ordinances and the explanatory memoranda, you won't find any justifications. I don't understand why such restrictions were necessary. Why, for example, couldn't the occupancy rate have been 50 percent instead of closing the spa completely? No such reasoning is given," said the representative of Mustamäe Elamus Spa, lawyer Gerli Helene Gritsenko.

However, the Government of the Republic believes that the general justifications for the restrictions were given and that at the time there were very few alternatives to prevent the virus.

"We are talking about restrictions around the beginning of the pandemic. These were measures that reduced human contact and human interaction. We didn't have vaccines, we didn't have the ability to treat the disease, we didn't have medicine. We also took into account the infectiousness of the activity, the library is less infectious than the spa. So there are these limitations," said government spokesperson Ave Henberg.

According to Supreme Court judge Julia Laffranque, the critical question is how thoroughly the government has to justify such restrictions.

"Are there differences in crisis situations? When time is really short and you have to protect people's health on the one hand and business freedom on the other, how do you balance that? How do you strike a balance? What is the government's obligation to justify? Should the proportionality test be done in depth? And then should the courts do it, and to what extent?" said Judge Laffranque.

"What we are looking for from the Supreme Court is for it to state its view on whether, in a health crisis, the government should have fine-tuned the substance of all the explanatory memoranda and structured them in the way that the complainants want, or whether we could have concentrated primarily on the fundamental right to health and on ensuring that patients with Covid-19, stroke and heart attacks receive medical care," Henberg said.

"It's a fundamental [dispute] in the sense that if we have a new health crisis, for example, how should the government of the republic impose restrictions? How should they justify them so that citizens understand why these restrictions are being imposed?" Gritsenko said.

The Supreme Court will announce its decision in September.

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