Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Revives Lawsuit Against L.A. Schools’ Covid Vaccine Mandate
The Court also determined that the covid shot is not actually a “traditional vaccine.”
At the start of the 2023 school year, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) decided it was time to end the covid vaccine mandate it had imposed on its employees.
Two years ago, the L.A. Unified School District set a high bar for COVID safety, telling employees: Get vaccinated or lose your job. That vaccine mandate — which achieved a 99% compliance rate among teachers — ended this week after a 6-1 vote by the Board of Education.
…“Yes, this board approved, required vaccinations, as a means of reducing transmission, reducing the severity of a disease that in this community, across this country and across the world killed millions,” L.A. Unified Supt. Alberto Carvalho said. “This was a necessary requirement, and it was adopted so that schools could reopen safely based on information that was known, then accepted, then verified, then validated … not by speculation, but by scientists.
“In 2023,” he added, “we face vastly different circumstances.”
A lawsuit accusing the district of violating workers’ rights has been moving through the court system despite the rollback of the mandate. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling also targets the definition of a vaccine, indicating the mRNA vaccine does not meet the criteria because it fails to “prevent the spread.”
The panel held that the voluntary cessation exception to mootness applied. LAUSD’s pattern of withdrawing and then reinstating its vaccination policies was enough to keep
this case alive. The record supported a strong inference that LAUSD waited to see how the oral argument in this court proceeded before determining whether to maintain the
Policy or to go forward with a pre-prepared repeal option.LAUSD expressly reserved the option to again consider imposing a vaccine mandate. Accordingly, LAUSD has not carried its heavy burden to show that there is no reasonable possibility that it will again revert to imposing a similar policy.
Addressing the merits, the panel held that the district court misapplied the Supreme Court’s decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905), in concluding that the policy survived rational basis review. Jacobson held that mandatory vaccinations were rationally related to preventing the spread of smallpox. Here, however, plaintiffs allege that the vaccine does not effectively prevent spread but only mitigates symptoms for the recipient and therefore is akin to a medical treatment, not a “traditional” vaccine. Taking plaintiffs’ allegations as true at this stage of litigation, plaintiffs plausibly alleged that the COVID-19 vaccine does not effectively “prevent the spread” of COVID-19. Thus, Jacobson does not apply.
The plaintiffs’ argument that since the covid vaccine was essentially therapeutic rather than preventative was a key element to the decision.
They argued that by requiring employees to get the COVID shot, the school district was interfering with workers’ right to refuse medical treatment.
“No one with any credibility would tell you that the vaccine prevented COVID or stopped the spread,” said John Howard, a San Diego attorney who argued the case on behalf of a handful of Los Angeles Unified employees and an Idaho-based group called the Health Freedom Defense Fund that’s filed several other COVID vaccine lawsuits.
“But when the hysteria was going on, that’s exactly what pharmaceutical companies and others said,” Howard said. “It was false.”
The lawsuit was filed by the Health Freedom Defense Fund and other plaintiffs. As one of the judges indicated, forcing a treatment on someone unwilling to accept infringes on fundamental rights.
The court, which covers nine states and two territories to include Alaska, agreed with the plaintiffs and stated this “crucial distinction undermines the foundational premise of the vaccine mandates enforced by various governmental and educational institutions.” Judge Collins went on to say forcing people to get something for their alleged health benefits infringes on “the fundamental right to refuse such treatments.”
As the “experts” seem to be revving up to use the covid-tactics for bird flu, the importance of this ruling cannot be over-stated. Individuals should have the right to refuse treatments, especially those being thrust on the public in response to ginned-up fears being spread by bureaucrats connected to Big Pharma.
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Comments
Once it was past the original variant there wasn’t a public health component that’s legally applied to justify vaccines.
Fuck off with that nonsense about ‘original variant’.
This wasn’t a vaccine. Before they changed the definition it would not have been legal to label it a vaccine. They suppressed and lied about there being treatment like ivermectin for it because if they admitted they could treat it, they couldn’t get an EUA for it. And even if it WERE a vaccine, the actual data showed there was no ‘public health component’ to justify it.
At literally every step of this nonsense they’ve been lying about the virus and the shot.
Totalitarians covering their tracks and making retroactive appeals to their sincerity with ‘original variant’ arguments without demonstrating their opposition at the time of mutation seems incredibly self serving. Especially when we consider that EVERYONE with any common sense and basic knowledge knew the damn virus would quickly mutate to less dangerous form in order to survive.
That’s a basic and well known adaptation. These same totalitarians and their enablers are routinely quiet re their stance on Natural Immunity at the time seemingly in the hope that refusing to mention it will make us forget exactly how much and how often the Covid Karen crazies lied about natural immunity.
Then there’s the lack of honesty about who was at high risk from Covid. Instead of telling the truth and crafting public polices to protect the most vulnerable; the obese, those with autoimmune issues and the frail elderly they imposed and enabled widespread mandates across the entire population, including those who had practically zero statistical risk aka those under 55 and otherwise healthy.
Finally the lies and use of mandates didn’t stop at a Covid jab. The lies spread out to encompass mask mandates which every pre and post Covid mania data set shows is not effective. Plus the ‘six foot social distance’ nonsense which was made up out of whole cloth.
From the Way Back Machine, Merriam Webster’s definition of “vaccine”:
January 18, 2021 7:47pm –
January 26, 2021 6:51am –
… What could have possibly happened between Jan 18 and Jan 26 in 2021 to require so radical and SPECIFIC a change … Hmmmm …. I wonder … Nothing comes to mind …
It’s almost comical. … Almost.
“b: a preparation of genetic material (such as a strand of synthesized messenger RNA) that is used by the cells of the body to produce an antigenic substance (such as a fragment of virus spike protein)”
The problem here, even if these biologicals are vaccines, they are also gene therapies. As gene therapies, the regulatory hurdles prior to approval for use are even higher than those for traditional vaccines (the GTs using a relatively novel technology without the history of safety alleged for traditional vaccines). This means the regulatory bars to their use were lowered twice. Once by adopting trials for them as if they were traditional vaccines (rather than more the more rigorous trials they would have faced as gene therapies), and again by lowering the bar to issue EUAs to allow distribution and use without approvals. Without the lowering of the former hurdle, the latter hurdle may have taken longer to cross, or maybe wouldn’t have been crossed at all, and may not have gone into use before the virus burned out as natural herd immunity took hold. This doubly-accelerated trajectory was necessary to assure that the vaxxes were put into use while money was still to be made from them.
The finding that the Covid shot does not comport with the traditional notion of a vaccine that prevents infection and transmission and therefore does not meet the public heath rationale of the Jacobson precedent is a milestone in reestablishing freedom and liberty.
I wrote this in November 2021:
Why vaccine mandates can no longer be considered in the interests of “public health”:
Vaccines only protect the vaccinated (e.g., reduction in the severity of illness), but do not prevent the vaccinated from infecting either the vaccinated or the unvaccinated with SARS-CoV-2. Therefore, the rationale that makes vaccination a matter of PUBLIC HEALTH is destroyed, and vaccination becomes a matter of PRIVATE HEALTH only. Because vaccines only provide (limited) protection to the vaccinated, the state no longer has a PUBLIC HEALTH interest in forcing vaccination. And by definition, the state has no PUBLIC HEALTH INTEREST in matters of private health, because individuals are responsible for their own health (conversely, the state is not responsible for the health of individuals). The vaccines may be usable tools with which certain vulnerable people may protect THEMSELVES, but they are not suitable tools with which the state may effect its responsibility for public health because they confer no public health benefits.
It was very explicit, in the beginning, that the shots were only being tested for reduction of symptoms, not for slowing or stopping transmission. That was clear. You can look at old threads here to see us debating that exact point over and over. That’s why they always talk about the shots with relation to COVID-19, not the virus. COVID-19 is the disease, not the infection … just as HIV is the virus but AIDs is the disease. When they talk about “efficacy against COVID” they are specifcally (and solely) referring to reduction of symptoms.
It was only after Traitor Joe slimed into office that he started making insane claims about stopping transmission and all of the little commie kids parroted his evil idiocy.
The original emergency testing for the shots was specifically ONLY for reduction of symptoms … but Traitor Joe and the dems thought it was better to lie about that and demonize (with an eye to shunning from society, in toto) anyone who refused to become part of the biggest, most insane, most evil FORCED medical experiment in the history of the universe.
This is misleading. The vaxxes were supposed to prevent transmission. Fauci said it. Albert Bourla (CEO of Pfizer) said it. Dr. Peter Hotez said it. These few among many other “experts” claimed the vaxxes were stop transmission. By this, they meant person immune by vaccination will break the chain of transmission, not that they couldn’t be infected. (Indeed, a vaccine only primes an immune system to destroy a virus after a person is infected.)
I remember those discussions. In particular, I mentioned in them that no vaccine prevents transmission – vaccines are not magical force fields. But of course, the person transmitting a virus isn’t a person made immune by a vaccine. An infected person can transmit a virus to a vaccinated person. But if the vaccine confers immunity to that second person, the chain of transmission halts, because the virus will not reproduce in a host whose immune system recognizes and destroys it before it can replicate in sufficient numbers for the host to be considered “contagious.” Anthony Fauci made a statement very similar to this.
No government agency should be able to require anybody to get any vaccine or other medical intervention.
That reminds me of the Galambosian in “It usually Begins with Ayn Rand” by Jerome Tuccille p.62
“There are five legitimate functions of governenment,” said the Galambosian.
“No kidding. What are they?”
“I am not at liberty to say. The theory was originated by Andy Galambos and it is his primary property.”
Props for the reference
Children and teenagers were never at significant risk from Covid-19.But they were forced to take the shot to ‘protect Teachers’. The recent Oxford study confirmed that myocarditis and pericarditis were solely from the shot and not the vaccine.
From the shot and not the virus.
yeah
was it from the vacationing teachers or the teachers via zoom???!?
We can agree govt has a role in public health, while disagreeing over the degree. But when government proposes a public health measure and the public responds “No thanks,” that should be the end of it. When govt can command “You must do X for your health”, do limits exist to its power?
DG, April 2022
The role it has it to advise about what it thinks is best. No more than that at all.
“role in public health”
please explain
Further … even after the so-called “FDA approval”, when the companies and government went whole-hog on forcing the shots on people, the “approved” shot (Cominarty) was not even available to people in the US!! That went on for months and months and months. And no court stepped in to stop it and no dirtbag government official ever even bothered addressing the point. And private companies and schools and all others looking to cowtow to the commies forced their employees and students and everyone to take non-approved faux-vaccines because the only faux-approved faux-vaccine, Cominarty, was not available to anyone, even if they had wanted to take it.
The criminality that was involved was of jaw-dropping proportions. Sheer evil. And we got no help from any courts over any of this. Hell … even the SCOTUS came down on the side of Commie Cali and its obviously raping of the 1st amendment when Newsom declared all religious services to be shut down (though Walmarts were doing business like gangbusters).
We were failed by almost every single government entity (certainly every single one that a democrat was anywhere near) with the worst acts in the history of America … and not a single person was held liable for his or her awful, awful crimes against America and against Americans.
Any person who’d vote for the vile and evil Dhimmi-crats, after what they’ve put the country through, over the past decade (and, longer), is a fool. To sum it all up in a non-exhaustive list:
Clinton/Obama-instigated “Russian Collusion” hoax;
The corrosive and dishonest “Borking” of then-Judge Kavanaugh, by utterly ridiculous, transparently contrived and politically-motivated last-minute slanders, during his SCOTUS nomination hearing in the Senate;
The absurd and subversive hoaxpeachment of President Trump, to undermine President Trump, and, to distract from the Biden crime family’s manifest corruption, self-enrichment and decades-old foreign bribery and racketeering schemes;
The Wuhan virus “lockdowns” and assorted lawless, tyrannical, freedom, health and prosperity-destroying edicts/diktats, and, the outrageous and unfair vilification of certain Americans for refusing to inject themselves with a dishonestly marketed, overhyped and inefficacious “vaccine”;
“Black Lives Matter,” “Anti-fa” and related, dishonest and contrived racial agitprop, murders, looting, agitation and insurrection —- directly enabled, rationalized and lauded by the Dhimmi-crat Party and its standard-bearers;
Pro-Hamas displays of gleeful. goose-stepping and genocidal Jew-hate, Islamofascism and Muslim supremacism — directly enabled, rationalized and lauded by the Dhimmi-crat Party and its standard-bearers;
Open borders lawlessness and the facilitation of an invasion of more than ten million illegal aliens, into the U.S. interior;
The continued misogynistic erasure of women and girls, the invasion of women’s and girls’ private spaces and sports, and, the evil manipulation/exploitation/abuse/mutilation of vulnerable and impressionable children and teens, into the “trans” ideology and cult.
But no call out yet by the cdc fjb to stop
monkeypox which would call for a ban on male-male s ex
It seems to me, the discussion on Lesli’s May 22 article about congress wanting to subpoena the CDC records related to COVID-19 vaccine efficacy among those already infected with the virus, most of our comments were on the side of the shot being ineffective. Now we learn that the 9th circuit’s court of appeals agrees with the majority of our comments. Maybe they read Legal Insurrection too.
Yeah right the vax fades. There is no long term benefit. But nobody is getting covid now. Gov newsom is such a fraud. CA is facing lost decade under dem super majority. smh
During peak hysteria of the early days of the pandemic, CA gov newscum, under EMERGENCY POWERS that he claimed for himself, ordered BILLIONS of dollars of masks from China over the internet in the middle of the night, paid for with taxpayer money of CA residents. The masks arrived defective and had to be thrown into the garbage. The man is imbecile.
Fool me once and shame on you
Fool me twice and shame on me
None of it made any sense to anyone with two brain cells to rub together. Masks, 6ft away, closing schools, mRNA gene therapies with a 90%+ efficacy rate. None of it
Facts have long established that the Covid vaccine did not prevent the spread of Covid, and the CDC’s redefinition of “vaccine” was surely designed to fool
The 9th Circuit majority’s ruling holds that Jacobson only applied to measures to prevent the spread of disease, and that we had credibly pled that the COVID vaccines were not designed or intended to prevent disease spread, but were only designed to reduce the severity of illness in infected persons. Therefore, the majority held that Jacobson does not apply.
Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld the authority of states to enforce compulsory vaccination laws.
.. if the SCOTUS doesn’t give some level of immunity to the POTUS (as Trump is petitioning), then we should be able to sue the hell out of the guy who gave us COVID mandates (hint: poopy pants)
blm marched in the streets in defiance of covid rules
oh wait,,,NO THE WERE NOT IN DEFIANCE AS they were not only singled out as exclusions to the rules ( like pelosi nusiance and fauci) they were
also the largest sector that said they didnt trust the government and were left out of alllll scathing attacks by the
msm>>howard stern//cnn types when it came to who was anti american in not taking the shot
only whites were the target of the lefty government and all those who hoped on THAT nazi train….hospitals etc who said they wouldnt treat patients unless the C19 shots had been taken
correction:
hopped on THAT
As an infectious diseases physician, I will just say this: Fauci is as close to Mengele as we have come in this era.
The mRNA vax was ineffective from my purview—it did not convey the immunity as reported. The clinical trials of the mRNA vax products were improperly conducted and were reported incorrectly. The approvals that were given were deeply, deeply flawed and too politically influenced on the “wehavetodosomething” basis, and the damage that was done was something that caused me to quit practicing clinically for a year while I reassessed my profession. And I’m still wondering.