Press Release: Another Huge Victory for Health Freedom Defense Fund

The following press release was sent out by Health Freedom Defense Fund. Press releases do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of those at the Idaho Dispatch.

September 26, 2023 – The Los Angeles Unified School District’s (LAUSD) Board of Education voted to rescind its Covid-19 vaccine mandate for all employees. The mandate had been in place since August of 2021. The policy rescission came in response to a lawsuit challenging the school district’s vaccine mandate by Health Freedom Defense Fund (HFDF), California Educators for Medical Freedom (CAEMF), and several named plaintiffs and represents a huge victory for the plaintiffs.

In what can only be described as anti-science zealotry, LAUSD had maintained its irrational injection mandate more than two years after the CDC had issued guidance in July of 2021 stating that Covid-19 injections do not protect against transmission or infection of Covid.

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To the delight of the plaintiffs and the thousand other LAUSD employees they represent, the mandate is now gone – all due to the lawsuit challenging its legality and rationality.

Soni Lloyd, one of CAEMF’s leaders said,

“I am glad LAUSD finally decided to respect medical choice. But a reasonable institution would have never done this in the first place. So many lives upended, including my own, for a drug they should have known was neither safe or effective. At the very least an honest academic would have observed enough doubt to compel them not to mandate this. Now we want LAUSD to make everyone who was impacted whole with back pay and the right to return to their jobs. And we will fight so this never happens again.”

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As HFDF noted in a recent update, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals skewered Connie Michaels, the attorney for LAUSD during oral argument on September 14, 2023. One of the judges on the Ninth Circuit Court panel of three judges said he was “shocked” and “floored” by LAUSD’s continuing mandate. He suggested that even in an emergency, any argument for a mandate wanes over time.

When Michaels attempted to justify the mandate by arguing it pertains to employment, another one of the judges asked “does it matter whether the vaccine stops transmission, what is the argument?” Later, he stated that LAUSD’s policy is irrational as it is well known that the Covid injections do not stop infection.

As the judges continued their questioning of Michaels and listened to her absurd defense that the court should give the state (LAUSD) the right to decide to mandate an injection even twenty years into the future, absent any emergency, it was clear the proceedings were not going in LAUSD’s favor.

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Hence, after court was adjourned, as Michaels and the plaintiffs’ attorney, John Howard, entered the gallery, Michaels sniped at Howard, “What are you going to do when they rescind the mandate?”

In that moment, Michaels revealed the truth – that she and LAUSD do not care about the LAUSD employees numbering over one thousand who have been fired or displaced in violation of their Constitutionally-protected rights due to LAUSD’s unscientific, unjustifiable, irrational mandate.

She and LAUSD don’t care that those teachers, many of whom have given decades to the school district and to their students, have not been paid in over 15 months, lost all their benefits, or been forced into retirement. They don’t care about the science. They don’t care about the right to privacy or bodily autonomy. They care only about granting power to the state to force unwanted medical interventions on employees.

LAUSD teacher Yvette Price described the impact the school district’s mandate had had on her by saying,

“The shock and disbelief I felt when the district was enforcing the vaccine mandate, turned to the fear of possibly losing my job! When I was fortunate to keep my job by teaching virtually, the feeling of being segregated, discriminated, humiliated and abandoned emerged! I felt, as many of us did, completely alone. The worse blow of all was when we realized our union did not support us in any way!”

After court adjourned, Michaels likely reported to her client, LAUSD, that the hearing did not tilt in their favor and that LAUSD should consider rescinding its Covid injection mandate.

So, today, Tuesday September 26, 2023, LAUSD’s Board of Education, voted 6 to 1 to rescind the mandate.

This is a huge victory for all the plaintiffs, for common sense, and for freedom.

LAUSD has contended that Jacobson v. Massachusetts, a lawsuit decided by the Supreme Court of the US (SCOTUS) in 1905 confers authority to the state to mandate vaccines but Jacobson applied to an extreme emergency, namely, a small pox outbreak which has a death rate of 30%-40%, the small pox vaccine was believed to confer immunity, employment was not predicated on submission to the vaccine, those who declined the vaccine were fined $5, and natural immunity was not an issue. None of those facts apply to Covid.

In short, Jacobson has been wildly misconstrued to enable massive government, business, and educational institution overreach never anticipated, let alone sanctioned, by SCOTUS in Jacobson.

Moreover, decades of case law since the 1950s are at odds with Jacobson. SCOTUS has ruled that each of us possesses a zone of privacy around us into which the state may not intrude (Griswold v. Connecticut), that we have the right to refuse unwanted medical treatment (Washington v. Harper), and that we have the right to refuse life-saving medical treatment (Cruzan v. Dir., Mo. Department of Health), among other decisions.

This case law conflicting with Jacobson, from an era when women could not vote and Jim Crow laws existed, must be consigned to the past and the Ninth Circuit Court has the perfect opportunity to do so.

That said, now that LAUSD has finally rescinded the Covid injection mandate, what will it do next? Will LAUSD seek dismissal of the case arguing the case is now moot?

If the school district does make that move, it would represent a very cynical effort to evade judicial review of the mandate and plaintiffs are confident the court would see through this maneuver as this would not be the first time LAUSD rescinded a Covid injection mandate in order to evade review.

In fact, LAUSD deployed the very same tactics in the plaintiffs’ first case against LAUSD when the school district illegally mandated the Emergency Use Authorized injections in March of 2021. In order to have that first case dismissed, LAUSD represented to the court that the school district did not have and was not intending to mandate the vaccine but just 17 days after the court took LAUSD at its word and dismissed the case, LAUSD mandated the shot.

The plaintiffs are confident the court will not fall for the same tactic once again but are prepared for the next phase of their efforts to pursue justice against LAUSD.