Ninth Circuit Court Violates its Own Rules; Overturns its 3-Judge Panel’s Decision on LAUSD Covid Vax Mandate

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals just delivered a decision in a multi-year Covid-vaccine mandates case that lowered the bar on legal decisions, violated 120 years of juris prudence, misinterpreted Jacobson v. Massachusetts, a Supreme Court case from 1905 about the smallpox,  and contradicted recent United States Supreme Court decisions.

Leslie Manookian, a 20+ year health freedom advocate and founder of the Health Freedom Defence Fund, filed suit against the Los Angeles Unified School District in 2021 following LAUSD terminating 1,000 teachers and staff, for declining to take the COVID vaccines.

LAUSD first tried to mandate the COVID vaccine when the shot was introduced, Manookian told the Globe. “We sued in 2021, and they rescinded the mandate the next day.”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.”

The district court ruled against the LAUSD plaintiffs, Health Freedom Defense Fund.

In January 2023 the Health Freedom Defence Fund appealed that decision. In June 2024 a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of plaintiffs (Health Freedom Defense Fund), overturning the district court and remanding the case back to the district court.

Manookian explained the 3-judge panel’s 2024 decision to the Globe:

“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 broke down the decision:

“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.”

The next month—July 2024—the defendants (LAUSD) filed a petition for an en banc review by the Ninth Circuit. That petition was granted in February of 2025, and oral argument was held in front of the 11-judge panel on March 18, 2025. On July 31, 2025, the Ninth Circuit issued its ruling in favor of the defendants LAUSD and dismissed the case.

The Globe spoke with Leslie Manookian once again this week about the strange turn of events with the Ninth Circuit. As she rightly noted, “the SCOTUS has overturned decisions rendered by the Ninth Circuit more often than it has any other circuit court in the US. This case amply serves to illustrate precisely why the Ninth has earned such an ignominious reputation.”

“That the three-judge panel rules in our favor shouldn’t have been a big win, but it was,” Manookian said. But the full Ninth Circuit didn’t like it, took it under review, and even expedited it. Manookian explains:

A review of the en banc process in the Ninth Circuit reports, “To qualify for en banc review, the petition must show that the decision of the three-judge panel conflicts with ‘a decision of the United States Supreme Court,’ ‘an authoritative decision of another United States court of appeals,’ or ‘a decision of the court to which the petition is addressed’ and consideration by the full court is ‘necessary to secure or maintain uniformity of the court’s decisions,’ or ‘the proceeding involves one or more questions of exceptional importance.’ Rule 40(b)(2)(A)-(D).” None of these conditions were met in our case, yet the rehearing was granted. Was this apparent violation of the rules a politically motivated decision?”

Manookian said the recent Ninth Circuit ruling is so egregious, and twisted 120 years of juris prudence, that it warrants a thorough breakdown of the main issues:

{1} The Ninth Circuit asserted that the right to direct one’s own medical treatment is not a fundamental right. It cited several precedents, including Mullins v. Oregon, 57 F.3d 789, 793 (9th Cir. 1995), in which the court held, “Only those aspects of liberty that we as a society traditionally have protected as fundamental are included within the substantive protection of the Due Process Clause.”

• nowhere does the US Constitution empower the state to dictate any medical intervention.
• On the contrary, the Constitution serves as a restraint on government, not on the people.
• Moreover, there is not a single case in the 120 years since Jacobson when a locality mandated a vaccination or otherwise directed the medical treatment of the people in general.

Thus, the Ninth Circuit’s insinuation that our society routinely accepts vaccine mandates for adults in general is patently false. By this metric and Jacobson’s holding in 1905, women would still not be allowed to vote.

• In actuality, Jacobson did not allow the state to condition employment or engagement in normal life on receipt of an injection. Instead, it merely allowed the state to impose a fine, not to condition employment or participation in normal life on receipt of an injection.

{2} The Ninth Circuit not only claimed that Jacobson is binding but it ignored ample and more recent SCOTUS jurisprudence that holds otherwise. In recent decades, SCOTUS has determined that each of us possesses a zone of privacy around us into which the state may not intrude (Griswold v. Connecticut); that each of us has the right to refuse unwanted medical treatment (Washington v. Harper); and that each of us has the right to refuse lifesaving medical treatment (Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health). Yet the Ninth Circuit has dismissed those decisions and has hidden behind the immoral and century-old Jacobson.

{3} Perhaps most egregious of all its conclusions, the Ninth Circuit held that as long as authorities could reasonably assume the Covid injection had a public benefit, the policy was constitutional—irrespective of whether the injection worked or whether any claims made by authorities were valid or true.

• Bennett wrote, “Jacobson holds that the constitutionality of a vaccine mandate, like the Policy here, turns on what reasonable legislative and executive decision makers could have rationally concluded about whether a vaccine protects the public’s health and safety, not whether a vaccine actually provides immunity to or prevents transmission of a disease.” But this contention is false. Jacobson did hinge on the general perception that the smallpox vaccine in particular, and vaccines in general, prevent transmission of disease. Clearly, absent that ability, there is no public health rationale.
• Most worryingly, by the court’s metric, a lying politician or policymaker can mandate virtually any medical intervention on the American people as long as it is under the guise of public health. [emphasis The Globe]

{4} In Jacobson, the Court reasoned that “in every well-ordered society charged with the duty of conserving the safety of its members the rights of the individual in respect of his liberty may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand” (197 U.S. at 30). [Emphasis added.]

• The Ninth Circuit made a massive stretch by equating the dangers of Covid with the dangers of smallpox. No comparison could be further from the truth. Evidence proves that early spread of Covid had already occurred across much of Los Angeles County by the spring of 2020, when research found that 4% of adults had already had the disease and had recovered from it, thereby negating the need for any preventive measures by late 2021, when the school district’s policy was implemented. In addition, it was widely documented at the time that the dangers of Covid were miniscule for all but the elderly and extremely infirm in comparison to the ravages of smallpox. Because there was provably no great danger from Covid, LAUSD’s injection mandate for employees was completely unreasonable and unjustified.

{5} In Jacobson, Justice Harlan wrote, “According to settled principles, the police power of a State must be held to embrace, at least, such reasonable regulations established directly by legislative enactment as will protect the public health and the public safety.” Since the Covid injections do not stop transmission or infection, they do not “protect the public health and the public safety” and are not “reasonable.” Therefore, the Ninth Circuit, or any court for that matter, cannot conclude that Covid injections do protect public health and safety when they do not affect either.

“This is so outrageous it opened the door to future mandates,” Manookian said.

Manookian said the Ninth Circuit didn’t even acknowledge that in September 2021 the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had suspiciously timed and conveniently altered its definition of “vaccine” from an injection that prevents disease and produces immunity to the “act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce protection.” This deceptive move allowed authorities to label Covid injections as “vaccines” instead of categorizing them as “gene therapy.” It should be obvious that the public would be reticent to submit to a new gene therapy whereas it would be more comfortable with a vaccine.

“This is a moral stain on society,” Manookian said. “Jacobsen is wrong – it’s liberty restrained versus a shot that may kill you. It comes down to liberty with forced medicine.”

“The CDC told us that the shots don’t stop transmission or infection, so how do they protect the public health?”

The quick answer already issued by the CDC is the shots don’t stop transmission or infection of Covid. So why did the Ninth Circuit overturn its own Three-judge panel? Is there a gun to their heads? Are they worried about the reports coming from the Health and Human Services agency, including the Autism report expected at the end of the month?

The Food and Drug Administration just rescinded emergency use authorizations for COVID-19 vaccines, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced last week, saying the move was made to end vaccine mandates.

In a post on X, Kennedy said:

“I promised 4 things: 1. to end the emergency. 2. to end covid vaccine mandates. 3. to keep vaccines available to people who want them, especially the vulnerable. 4. to demand placebo-controlled trials from companies.”

“In a series of FDA actions today we accomplished all four goals. The emergency use authorizations for Covid vaccines, once used to justify broad mandates on the general public during the Biden administration, are now rescinded. FDA has now issued marketing authorization for those at higher risk: Moderna (6+ months), Pfizer (5+), and Novavax (12+).  These vaccines are available for all patients who choose them after consulting with their doctors.

The American people demanded science, safety, and common sense. This framework delivers all three.

Thank you @DrMakaryFDA for your leadership.”

Be sure to read Leslie Manookian’s latest post for more detail on the legal case.

Here are the links to all of our articles on the Health Freedom Defence Fund’s legal cases. They are considering appealing to the United States Supreme Court. We hope they do.

LAUSD: ‘Violating Employee Rights and Misleading the Courts’

LAUSD Firing Unvaccinated Teachers and Staff – Even With Teacher Shortage

9th Circuit Judges ‘Shocked’ and ‘Floored’ by LAUSD’s Ongoing Covid-19 Vaccine Mandate for Employees

LAUSD Board Finally Rescinds Covid-19 Vaccine Mandate for Employees

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