HUGE Legal Victory: Health Freedom Defense Fund Wins Appeal Against LAUSD

In an epic legal win, Health Freedom Defense Fund (HFDF), California Educators for Medical Freedom, and individual plaintiffs have won their appeal in the Ninth Circuit on LAUSD’s Employee Covid Vaccination Mandate.

The issues centered on how LAUSD and others used the US Supreme Court’s (SCOTUS) Jacobson v. Massachusetts case from 1905 to justify vaccine mandates. The Ninth Circuit agreed with Plaintiffs that the Jacobson case has been wildly misconstrued to justify authoritarian overreach. Leslie Manookian, the founder of Health Freedom Defense Fund, alleged in the lawsuit that “the COVID jabs are not ‘traditional’ vaccines because they do not prevent the spread of COVID-19 but only purport to mitigate COVID symptoms in the recipient. This, HFDF had alleged in its complaint, makes the COVID jab a medical treatment, not a vaccine.”

It was a split ruling by a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (two Trump appointees, 1 Clinton appointee), issued Friday, reversing the District Court decision in the lawsuit filed by Los Angeles Unified School District employees challenging the district’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The case is remanded back to the District Court.

LAUSD did not rescind its COVID-19 vaccine mandate until September 2023.

Here’s what went down:

In April 2023 the Globe reported that Leslie Manookian, Founder of the Health Freedom Defence Fund, filed suit against the Los Angeles Unified School District in 2021 following the district terminating 1,000 teachers and staff, for declining to take the COVID shots.

LAUSD first tried to mandate the COVID “vaccine” when the shot was introduced, Manookian said. “We sued in 2021, and they rescinded the mandate the next day.” However, that was not the end of it.

“In July 2021, as the case was working its way through the system, LAUSD represented to our attorney and in a brief filed with the court, that there ‘is no mandate’ and that LAUSD had no intention of issuing a mandate. The court accepted this representation in dismissing the case as not ‘ripe’ on July 27, 2021. Thus, if there is no mandate, the lawsuit is not ripe.”

“Seventeen days later LAUSD issued a COVID vaccine mandate,” Manookian said.

So they filed suit again. Manookian said the lawsuit filed by HFDF, on behalf of California Educators for Medical Freedom (CAEMF), and individual plaintiffs challenged the Los Angeles Unified School District’s COVID-19 injection mandate for all teachers and staff as a condition of employment because it violates the employees’ liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which includes rights of personal autonomy, self-determination, bodily integrity, and the right to reject medical treatment.

“We discovered that LAUSD had not been forthright with the District Court during the first case when it claimed there ‘is no mandate.’”

“According to depositions taken during the course of the second case, LAUSD Chief Human Resource Officer Ileana Davalos stated that ‘they were drafting a mandate in the first half of July 2021,’ demonstrating that LAUSD had not been telling the truth about the mandates with the court in the first case.”

Manookian said the mandate was a violation of privacy under the due process clause of the Constitution, and it was also “arbitrary” because the CDC had already admitted that the shots do not stop transmission of COVID-19. “So it’s a medicine or a theraputic, and not a vaccine,” she said.

Teachers lost their jobs for refusing the experimental vaccine, and some were relegated to online teaching and left in limbo, Manookian said. Teachers were told their religious beliefs didn’t matter, or their medical needs didn’t matter. “Some have had adverse reactions to other shots. They’ve been denied the the ability to protect themselves and their religious beliefs. They’ve been fired for doing so, or were just cast aside.”

Manookian was so right. She explains Friday’s decision:

“Reversing the decision of the Central District of California in Los Angeles, the Ninth Circuit majority held that, first, the case was not mooted by LAUSD’s rescission of the mandate after oral argument last September, 2023. The majority called out LAUSD’s gamesmanship for what it was – a bald-faced attempt at avoiding an adverse ruling by trying to create an issue of mootness.

Unfortunately for LAUSD, they had already done this once in the trial court. Applying the voluntary cessation doctrine, the majority doubted LAUSD’s sincerity in rescinding the mandate immediately after an unfavorable oral argument in September of last year.”

Attorney Julie Hamill deliciously broke down the decision on X/Twitter:

“Much like LADPH and other authoritarian government agencies, LAUSD had a pattern of withdrawing and then reinstating its vaccination policies. According to the Court, this pattern was enough to keep the 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.” The mootness argument was rejected.

Then, we get to the real juice. “[T]he 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.”

Manookian continues noting that the court identifies the COVID shot as a therapeutic, and not a vaccine as it does not halt the transmission of the virus:

“The majority, however, noted that HFDF had alleged in the lawsuit that the COVID jabs are not “traditional” vaccines because they do not prevent the spread of COVID-19 but only purport to mitigate COVID symptoms in the recipient. This, HFDF had alleged in its complaint, makes the COVID jab a medical treatment, not a vaccine.

By May 2023, the Globe reported that LAUSD was still firing experienced teachers over the COVID vaccine mandate, while simultaneously advertising that they are hiring teachers, and offering $5,000 bonuses to new, right out of college, non-credentialed teachers.

The Globe talked with Raquel, one of those displaced teachers who said the district kicked her out of her classroom September 20, 2021, and sent her to the district’s virtual (online) teaching. But she was kicked out of that September 2022, as well.

Raquel said she has a religious exemption from the mandatory vaccines, but has been targeted by the district for termination. Yesterday she received a notice from the LAUSD telling her that her “reasonable accommodation” request for next year has been denied.

She called the LAUSD and was told, “get a vaccine and we can rehire you.”

HFDF president Leslie Manookian said:

“The Ninth Circuit ruling today demonstrates that the court saw through LAUSD’s monkey business, and in so doing, it made clear that American’s cherished rights to self determination, including the sacred right of bodily autonomy in matters of health, are not negotiable. This is a great  triumph for the truth, decency, and what is right.”

You can read Leslie Manookian’s entire report about the Ninth Circuit decision on LAUSD’s Employee Covid Vaccination Mandate.

Jen Van Laar at RedState has an eye-opening timeline breakdown of LAUSD’s back-and-forth actions mandating and rescinding the COVID shots, manipulating the plaintiffs and the court.

And be sure to read Julie Hamill’s entire thread on the North Circuit ruling on X/Twitter.