In a 6-1 vote late Tuesday, the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education rescinded the district’s COVID-19 vaccination requirement for all district employees. But critics worry the move is an attempt to thwart a lawsuit that seeks justice for the more than 1,000 employees affected by the mandate.
Mary Holland, J.D., president of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), commented:
“People can get discouraged with lawsuits — they take a lot of time and money — but this is an example of the payoff — the authoritarian actor LAUSD backed down. No one should think for a minute that without HFDF [Health Freedom Defense Fund] this would have happened. It would not have. Pushing back against unconstitutional, dictatorial acts is incredibly important. It is a huge credit to the health freedom movement as a whole that there has not been a single COVID vaccine mandate imposed in a public school district in the country that has stuck. This feat would not have been possible without grassroots activism and lawsuits.”
Leslie Manookian, president and founder of Health Freedom Defense Fund, agreed the vote was “another huge victory” for the health freedom movement.
Still, she said, the district’s choice to rescind the order now — more than two years after it was announced and after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention admitted COVID-19 vaccines don’t prevent infection or transmission — is a “cynical attempt to evade justice as the judges signaled they believed LAUSD’s vaccine mandate was irrational.”
HFDF provides legal representation for LAUSD employees negatively affected by the vaccine mandate. On Nov. 2, 2021, HFDF and LAUSD employees with California Educators for Medical Freedom sued top officials of the LAUSD, including board members, alleging the district’s vaccine mandate violated employees’ 14th Amendment “rights of personal autonomy, self-determination, bodily integrity, and the right to reject medical treatment.”