Public Health Authority Case Updates for April, May, and June 2024
April, 2024
Thursday April 4th: The Court of Appeals of Indiana almost entirely upheld a preliminary injunction blocking Indiana’s abortion law from being applied against certain religious individuals in Individual Members of Medical Licensing Board of Indiana v. Anonymous Plaintiff 1. Plaintiffs, members of a group called Hoosier Jews for Choice and five anonymous women, challenged Indiana’s restrictive 2022 law criminalizing most abortions based on the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). The court held that the issue was justiciable because the group Hoosier Jews for Choice was a valid associational plaintiff for standing, and the plaintiffs established ripeness by showing that they were altering their current behavior based on a fear of not being able to get an abortion in the future.
The court also held that the plaintiffs had shown they were likely to succeed on the merits of their RFRA claim because they had shown that they had sincerely held religious beliefs that would require them to get abortions that were otherwise illegal under the ban, and that the state’s abortion ban was not narrowly tailored enough given the medical exemptions currently allowed. The appeals court remanded to the lower court to clarify that the preliminary injunction only applies for plaintiffs who would have valid RFRA claims if they challenged the ban.
Tuesday April 16th: The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of a challenge to a prison’s masking mandate during the COVID-19 pandemic in DeGroot v. Wisconsin Department of Corrections. The plaintiff, a prisoner in a Wisconsin state prison in 2020, claimed that the prison’s mask mandate violated religious freedoms under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). The RLUIPA requires that any prison policy that substantially burdens a prisoner’s sincere religious belief must be the least restrictive means of achieving a compelling state interest. However, the lower court held, and the Seventh Circuit affirmed, that the case was moot because the RLUIPA only allows for injunctive relief, and the mask mandate had been rescinded in 2022. Further, the plaintiff’s complaint did not fit without the exception for conduct the defendants were likely to resume because “the now-rescinded mandate … responded to a version of the pandemic that is no longer around.”
Tuesday April 16th: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss two claims and stay one other in a California church’s challenge to the state’s COVID-19 era policies. In Calvary Chapel San Jose v. County of Santa Clara, the plaintiffs, a church in San Jose, California and its pastor, are challenging several public health orders issued by California and Santa Clara County on constitutional grounds. However, the lower court dismissed claims that requested injunctions and declaratory judgments against the County to allow the County’s enforcement action to proceed. The court stayed the Court’s claim for money damages until the state’s enforcement action against Calvary has finished. The lower court also dismissed Calvary’s First Amendment retaliation claim because the allegedly retaliatory conduct, informing the Church’s lender of the enforcement lawsuit, was part of the state’s enforcement action, and therefore had First Amendment protection under the Noerr-Pennington doctrine. The Ninth Circuit dismissed Calvary’s appeal of the dismissal of the retaliation claim because there has not yet been a final decision in the case and appellate jurisdiction did not yet exist.
Tuesday April 16th: The federal district court for the Northern District of Texas dismissed yet another challenge to the federal government’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal employees in Arzamendi v. Austin. The plaintiffs, civilian Department of Defense employees with sincere religious objections to vaccination, alleged that the federal government’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate caused them emotional and psychological harm because their requests for religious exemption to the vaccine mandate were not adjudicated quickly. However, the court dismissed the claims related to vaccination as moot because plaintiffs filed suit before their requests for exemption were denied. In the meantime, the vaccine mandate was rescinded. The court also dismissed the plaintiffs challenge to the masking and testing alternative to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate because the plaintiffs did not adequately plead religious objections to masking and testing, instead only focusing on vaccination.
Friday April 19th: The federal district court for the Southern District of New York denied a preliminary injunction seeking to halt enforcement of New York’s restriction on the sale of dietary aids and weight loss supplements to persons over the age of 18. In Council for Responsible Nutrition v. James, the plaintiffs, a consortium of dietary supplement companies, argued that the restriction infringed their First Amendment commercial Free Speech rights. However, the court held that the plaintiffs had not met the burden of showing a likelihood of success on the merits because a categorical ban on sale of weight loss supplements to those under 18 fell squarely within the state’s traditional police powers to promote the public health and did not implicate First Amendment Free Speech protections.
Thursday April 25th: The Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld in part and overturned in part a lower court’s dismissal of a challenge to a New York school district’s mask mandate for students during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Doe v. Franklin Square Union Free School District, the plaintiff child claimed that her asthma prevented her from wearing a mask at school. After the school district denied her medical exemption, plaintiff’s parent brought suit on her behalf alleging that the school violated both her Fourteenth Amendment Due Process rights in denying the exemption, as well as her rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. The lower court held, and the Second Circuit affirmed, that the Due Process claim failed because mask mandates do not infringe a fundamental constitutional right. However, the Second Circuit overturned the lower court regarding the ADA and § 504 claims explaining that plaintiff was not required to exhaust her claims under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) before seeking damages under the ADA.
Thursday April 25th: The Maine Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of a challenge to the state’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for state emergency medical service employees in Calnan v. Hurley. The plaintiffs argued that Maine’s Emergency Medical Services (EMS) agency lacked the statutory authority to issue a COVID-19 and influenza vaccine mandate. In addition, even if the agency possessed statutory authority, it violated procedural requirements for issuing the vaccine mandate.
The Maine Supreme Court affirmed the lower court decision, stating that the Maine EMS enabling statute contained “a broad grant of authority to the EMS Board to promulgate rules related to the EMS program” which was sufficient to set immunization requirements for workers to protect patients. Plaintiffs had also argued that the rulemaking process was subject to a more stringent set of procedures applicable to “major substantive rules,” as opposed to the less stringent requirements for “routine technical rules.” However, the statute setting forth these two categories of rulemaking only applied to rules authorized for adoption after January 1, 1996. Because the rulemaking authority for the EMS Board was enacted before 1996, the court determined that the “major substantive rules” standard did not apply. The procedure that the EMS Board followed met the procedural requirements that did apply.