School employees sue Lamont over ‘burdensome’ COVID testing
Nine unvaccinated Connecticut educators and school employees have filed a lawsuit against Gov. Ned Lamont and Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Manisha Juthani over the “burdensome” travel and expenses caused by weekly COVID-19 testing, according to the complaint.
Lamont issued an executive order in September, requiring state employees, school staff and child care workers to either get the COVID-19 vaccine or undergo continuous testing to stay employed.
The nine teachers and school employees who filed the lawsuit chose not to get vaccinated and most of them opted for the weekly testing. The lawsuit alleges the nasal swabs used for testing were “highly invasive.” And if the educators didn’t want to get tested via nasal swab, the lawsuit said saliva testing meant long travel in their personal time, expenses and “burdensome and oppressive” testing schedules.
The lawsuit comes as Lamont’s executive orders are set to expire Feb. 15. The governor is asking the legislature to continue 11 of his orders, but the provision requiring state employees and educators to be vaccinated or tested regularly is not among them. The governor is asking for the legislature to preserve his orders requiring employees of state hospitals, workers at long-term care facilities and visitors at nursing homes to be vaccinated.
However, the plaintiffs are seeking permanent relief that would compel Lamont and Juthani to “cease the unlawful enforcement” of the executive order, a “declaratory judgment” that the executive order is “invalid,” a temporary order of mandamus, a preliminary injunction and relief including attorney’s fees and costs.
Representatives for Lamont and the state Department of Public Health declined to comment about the lawsuit. The governor and Juthani have also not responded in court, according to the online docket.
The lawsuit says the plaintiffs continue to “suffer emotional distress as a result of the stigma associated with their respective objections to getting vaccinated and/or being compelled to endure the highly invasive nasal swab testing.”
The lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday by Westport attorney John Bolton, alleges the executive order was “hastily issued in direct violation of the vaccine protocol established by the state legislature in July of 2003,” according to a press release from Bolton and Stamford attorney Lindy Urso.
Urso previously filed his own lawsuit against Lamont in federal court in spring 2020 over the governor’s executive order requiring masks early in the pandemic. A federal judge dismissed the suit in favor of Lamont in December 2021.
“The deficiency in Plaintiff ’s case is that he challenges a mandate that has no express enforcement provision at all ... or, alternatively, has sued the wrong individual with respect to the mandates for which enforcement is expressly contemplated,” U.S. District Judge Kari A. Dooley wrote in a memo explaining her decision.
In the new lawsuit, Bolton and Urso said the nine plaintiffs “want to send a strong message to the governor and both houses of the CT Legislature that failure to adhere to the established public health emergency statutes will no longer be tolerated.”
The plaintiffs included Colleen Alfano, a guidance counselor at Greenwich Public Schools; William Michael, a teacher at the Region 14 Schools District; Kara Giacobbe, a teacher at Fairfield Public Schools; Peter Gersz, a teacher at Clinton Public Schools; Melissa Cassidy, a teacher at the Woodstock Academy; Sarah Yaiser, a teacher at Wethersfield Public Schools; Michael Bond, a teacher at Madison Public Schools; Maria Hainer, a school psychologist at Madison Public Schools; and Tricia Edgar, a teacher at Madison Public Schools.
In the lawsuit, the school employees complained of traveling far distances in their personal time to get a saliva test to avoid the “highly invasive nasal swab.”
Yaiser was put on administrative leave for four days after refusing vaccination and testing, the lawsuit stated. She has since participated in weekly saliva testing, “which requires excessive traveling replete with burdensome and oppressive testing schedules,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit states the plaintiffs had to “allow someone to shove a long stick with a swab on it and have that stick swirled around inside their nasal passage/cavity” and the “swab contains chemicals, the nature and safety profile of which is unknown.”
The lawsuit alleges that the educators “all have suffered and continue to suffer physical harm as a result of these invasive tests,” including their DNA being “placed in jeopardy” as they “have no idea what third parties end up in possession of their DNA samples,” as well as what ultimately happens to their DNA profiles after testing.