COURT REFUSES TO REHEAR SDUSD CASE
Decision upholds vaccine mandate for teenage students
A student’s federal legal fight to block San Diego Unified School District from barring teenage students not vaccinated against COVID-19 from in-person learning suffered another blow Friday, when an appeals court refused to rehear the case.
The request came after a three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued and then quickly lifted an emergency order to stop the mandate late last year.
According to the ruling Friday, a majority of active 9th Circuit judges voted to deny the request for a rehearing en banc, or by a larger panel of 11 judges.
The lawsuit was filed in October by a Scripps Ranch teenager identified in court records as Jill Doe, who was 16 at the time, alleging she was being discriminated against by being denied inperson education because
her religious beliefs precluded the jab.
The decision is the latest development in a legal battle surrounding a mandate that would restrict in-person learning and on-campus activities among SDUSD students 16 and older to those
who are fully vaccinated. The policy was to take effect Jan. 24.
As of Jan. 11, the district was temporarily blocked from enforcing its vaccinemandate plans by a San Diego Superior Court judge in another lawsuit challenging
SDUSD’s authority to impose the mandate.
The district insists it’s a necessary step to ensure students and staff are protected against the coronavirus, but critics say it’s an infringement on personal liberty.
In her lawsuit, Doe stated that, as a Christian, she is unwilling to take vaccines developed using aborted fetal cells.
Coronavirus vaccines do not contain material from aborted fetal cells or tissue. But some of the cell lines used to test vaccines in the lab include cells derived from aborted fetuses. It is a thorny issue for some, though the Catholic Church and Southern Baptist Convention have spoken in favor of the vaccines, citing the shots’ protective benefits against severe COVID-19.
Judges writing for the majority in the decision not to rehear the case also cited protective benefits for most students.
Writing in support of the majority, Judges Marsha Berzon and Mark Bennett wrote, “... The record demonstrates that SDUSD’s core interest in promulgating the student vaccination mandate was to promote ‘the health and safety of [its] students’ overall, including through medical exemptions. The mandate is consistent with that interest, as it requires vaccination in all cases in which vaccination will not harm the health and safety of a specific student.”
They noted other vaccines are required for students to attend school as a matter of public safety.
Judge Patrick Butamay, with the dissenting minority, argued that the court should have granted a rehearing because Doe had a constitutional right to exercise her religion freely — even in times of crisis — and the mandate violates it.
The 9th Circuit had initially ordered a temporary halt to the mandate on Nov. 28 as long as the district was allowing pregnant students to defer vaccination.
The district announced the next day that it had removed the pregnancy deferral, and the court lifted the injunction on the district’s plans Dec. 4. That only leaves a limited number of exemptions, such as doctorcertified medical conditions that would make vaccination unsafe.
There’s still no exemption for personal beliefs, but the court ruled that there wasn’t clear evidence the mandate had been created to target anyone’s beliefs.