Public Health Authority Case Updates for July, August, and September, 2023

July, 2023

Monday, 7/10: In Green Bay, Wisconsin, a lawsuit was settled between the Republican National Committee and the Green Bay City Clerk, Celestine Jeffreys. The issue at hand was that the city allowed election observers to have access to early voting during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, the court favored the city.

Monday, July 10: Following a remand from the United States Supreme Court in 2021, the Minnesota Court of Appeals found for members of the Amish community in Mast v. County of Fillmore. Appellants challenged the county and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) for the county’s ordinance based on MPCA rules for subsurface sewage treatment systems. The county had provided local standards for the Amish, which appellants claimed infringed on their rights to religious exercise in violation of the state and federal constitutions, along with the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). The state appeals court agreed that the county had a compelling interest in preventing water contamination, but the record evidence did not support the lower court’s ruling that MPCA’s requirement furthered a compelling interest specific to the appellants, as required under RLUIPA.

Tuesday, 7/11: The Maine Department of Health and Human Services has proposed removing the COVID-19 vaccine from the list of required immunizations for health care workers. Currently, a lawsuit has been filed by workers against the state of Maine for removing this requirement.

Wednesday, 7/12: Magistrate Judge Patricia Dodge decided to dismiss the plaintiffs' claims in Ulery v. Jackson-Decarcia. This case involved a Pennsylvania employee who claimed that a COVID-19 paid leave incentive plan discriminated against those who are unvaccinated.

Wednesday, July 12: A lawsuit brought by employees of a county-run hospital in Ohio over a vaccine mandate was dismissed by the district court. MetroHealth required employees to be vaccinated for COVID-19 with health and religious exemptions. Plaintiffs argued that the policy discriminated against them based on religion, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, free exercise, and state law. The District Court found that the former employees had failed to state claims against MetroHealth.

Thursday, July 13: The Sixth Circuit upheld Michigan State University’s requirement that employees be vaccinated against COVID-19 in Norris v. Stanley. Plaintiffs, employees of the university, refused to be vaccinated based on natural immunity, and argued that the policy violated their constitutional rights and moreover, was preempted by federal law. The Appeals Court affirmed the lower court’s dismissal of all claims.

Friday, July 21: A district court, in Feds for Medical Freedom v. Biden, issued an injunction in January 2022 to block mandatory vaccinations for federal workers. This plaintiff has also filed three lawsuits in 2023 concerning the Navy, State Department, and Department of Justice’s vaccine policies. The federal government now has petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States to dismiss the case.

Monday, July 24: In Missouri v. Biden, two states, Missouri and Louisiana, and four individual defendants sued White House employees and several federal agencies for suppressing the plaintiff’s speech on social media platforms. A motion to consolidate this case with Kennedy v. Biden, which dealt with the same claims, was contested by an individual plaintiff. The court ruled the cases should be consolidated because the issues are substantively similar, and consolidation will promote judicial efficiency.

Tuesday, July 25: A lawsuit, T&V Associates v. Director of Health and Human Services, involving 125 small businesses against Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services is pending an appeal at the Michigan Supreme Court. The businesses claim they were wrongfully forced to close as a result of COVID-19 lockdowns.

Thursday, July 27: Over 20 school law enforcement officers are suing Los Angeles Unified, in Cardenas v. Los Angeles Unified School District, seeking compensatory damages and to be reinstated in their jobs that they were fired from. The plaintiffs allege they were wrongfully terminated, despite filing for religious exemptions from the mandatory employee vaccine mandate.

Friday July 28th: On July 20th, in Griffin v. Massachusetts Department of Revenue, the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts dismissed a Title VII lawsuit. Here, an employee at the Massachusetts Department of Revenue was denied a request for religious exemption for the company’s mandatory COVID-19 vaccination, and subsequently fired after refusing to get vaccinated. The plaintiff alleged religious discrimination and the Court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim under Title VII.

Monday July 31st: in X Corp v. Center for Countering Digital Hate Inc., X Corp, formerly known as Twitter, sued CCDH US, a non-profit corporation. X Corp alleges that the defendants censored important topics on their website, such as COVID-19 vaccinations. In this latest prayer for relief, X Corp seeks a trial by jury along with a monetary and preliminary injunction for the harm on inaccurate research about COVID-19 vaccinations and other important topics.  

August, 2023

Tuesday August 1st: former Beth Israel Lahey Health employees were fired for refusing to get COVID-19 vaccines in McEntee v. Beth Israel Lahey Health Inc.. A federal judge dismissed most of the lawsuit filed by these plaintiffs, as the imminent bodily harm by the vaccination policy that the former employees alleged was ruled to not constitute assault and there was not viable equal protection claim. The only claim permitted by the judge was that the hospitals were motivated by retaliatory animus when they fired the employees.

Wednesday August 2nd: In Hodges v. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, A California Court of Appeals ruled in favor of an employer at the Cedar Sinai-Medical Center after they fired their employee, Deanna Hodges, for refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Here, the plaintiff did not sufficiently provide evidence of a disability that would exempt her from the mandatory vaccine policy and thus her claims for disability discrimination and under the Fair Employment and Housing Act were inadequate.

Wednesday, August 2nd: In Skains v. Lake Central School Corporation, an Indiana District Court judge granted summary judgment and dismissed a lawsuit that several parents brought against the school district. The parents challenged Lake Central’s policies on masking, contact tracing, and quarantine procedures, alleging they violated the Indiana Constitution, Indiana law, and Fourth and First Amendment rights under the United States Constitution. The court held that plaintiffs failed to state actionable claims.

Friday, August 4th: In Adams v. New York State Unified Court System, a New York District Court ruled partly in favor of the state defendants in a lawsuit filed by a court clerk. The clerk brought claims of religious discrimination and retaliation in violation of Title VII based on the court system’s vaccination mandate.The Court found that the plaintiff failed to allege claims of disparate treatment and retaliation based on her religion. However, the plaintiff’s claim of failure to accommodate her religious beliefs did not warrant dismissal.

Tuesday, August 8th: In Massachusetts, two white male business owners filed a lawsuit in district court against the state alleging racial discrimination for the state’s Inclusive Recovery Grant Program, which gave pandemic recovery funds to small businesses owned by women and people of color.

Wednesday August 16th: In Fox v. Makin, a Maine district court allowed a case to proceed challenging Maine’s mandatory childhood vaccine policy. Specifically, the plaintiffs argue that the lack of a religious exemption violates the free exercise and equal protection clauses. The court held that the plaintiffs’ case was plausible, given a recent 1st Circuit case that held a similar mandate for Maine healthcare workers also potentially violated the free exercise clause.

September, 2023

Friday September 1st: in Apter v. Health & Human Svc., the Fifth Circuit held that three doctors can use the Administrative Procedure Act to overcome sovereign immunity in their suit against the FDA regarding messaging on ivermectin to treat COVID-19. The doctors allege that the FDA’s campaign to discourage individuals from taking the drug interfered with their practices and harmed their reputations.

Tuesday September 5th: In Howell v. Cooper, a North Carolina appeals court held that bar owners negatively impacted by COVID-19 shutdowns could proceed with their claims against the Governor. Though the state argued that sovereign immunity should apply, the court held that the bar owners had overcome this by sufficiently alleging plausible constitutional violations. The lone dissenter argued that the COVID emergency laws are presumed constitutional, and therefore the court would need to hold Cooper’s actions arbitrary or irrational in another case before stripping his immunity.

Thursday September 7th: In DiCapua v. City of New York, 10 teachers who lost their jobs for not complying with New York City’s COVID vaccine mandate were ordered rehired and given back pay by a New York state trial court. The judge held that the denial of religious exemptions and subsequent firing of the plaintiffs had been unlawful, arbitrary, and capricious, in part because most of the student population was also unvaccinated. However, the plaintiffs’ request to certify a class was denied for being overbroad.

Thursday September 7th: Former BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee employees filed a class action lawsuit in a federal district court alleging they were fired for not receiving the COVID-19 vaccine after their religious exemptions and reasonable accommodation requests were unfairly denied.Friday September 1st: in Apter v. Health & Human Svc., the Fifth Circuit held that three doctors can use the Administrative Procedure Act to overcome sovereign immunity in their suit against the FDA regarding messaging on ivermectin to treat COVID-19. The doctors allege that the FDA’s campaign to discourage individuals from taking the drug interfered with their practices and harmed their reputations.

Friday September 8th: In Missouri v. Biden, the Fifth Circuit narrowed the injunction limiting the ability of federal agencies to ask social media platforms to take down certain posts. The lower court held that the agencies had violated the First Amendment by pressuring platforms to remove posts related to topics such as COVID-19 origin theories, vaccine side-effects, and election fraud. The amended order only applies to the White House, the Surgeon General, the CDC, and the FBI, cutting three additional agencies. The language of the injunction also softened, with the agencies not being allowed to “coerce” companies to delete posts. However, the injunction was administratively stayed by Justice Alito on Thursday, September 14th, and will not go into effect until Saturday, September 23rd at the earliest.

Wednesday, September 13th: In National Association for Gun Rights v. Grisham, a gun rights activist group filed suit in the District Court of New Mexico against the state government for declaring gun violence a public health emergency and suspending open and concealed carry laws in parts of the state. The suit, arguing that the orders violate the Second Amendment, names the New Mexico Department of Health Secretary as well as Governor Lujan Grisham as defendants. The court granted the requested temporary restraining order, and a motion for a preliminary injunction is currently pending.

Thursday, September 14th: In Meta Platforms v. District of Columbia, the DC Court of Appeals upheld a subpoena against Facebook’s parent company, Meta, seeking data on their internal COVID-19 misinformation policies. The District of Columbia initially filed suit against Meta alleging they misled the public on their commitment to addressing misinformation on their platforms during the pandemic. The lower court held, and the Court of Appeals agreed, that the information the subpoena seeks is not governed under the Stored Communications Act, so a warrant is not required to compel Meta to produce it.

Thursday, September 14th: The Northern District of Texas dismissed the majority of claims in Schelske v. Austin for mootness, except for the claims of an Army service member discharged for not receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. The plaintiffs sued claiming that the Army violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in mandating the COVID-19 vaccine for all service members. All but one of the plaintiffs in the case remained in the Army throughout the litigation, and given the vaccine mandate’s recission, the court held their claims were now moot. The claims brought by the one plaintiff who had been discharged, however, can still proceed to seek reinstatement, or to change his discharge record to honorable.

Tuesday September 19th: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed suits in federal district courts of Florida and Ohio alleging that employers violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by not accommodating their employees’ religious beliefs. The two cases both involve employees who were fired for not receiving the COVID-19 vaccination after their requests for religious exemptions were denied.

Tuesday September 19th: A New York district court judge dismissed a New York City Court Judge’s claims in Mora v. New York State Unified Court System. The plaintiff alleged that the state court system’s requirement that employees receive the COVID-19 vaccine, as well as their denial of his religious exemption violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and his First Amendment rights. The district court disagreed, holding that the mandate applied to all employees of the New York Unified Court System, and the mere fact that his religious exemption was denied does not make the policy non-neutral.

Wednesday September 20th: In Brown v. NW Permanente, a federal district court in Oregon allowed a challenge to the state’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers to proceed on religious discrimination grounds. The two plaintiffs, healthcare workers, sued their former employer, Northwest Permanente, after they were terminated despite their religious exemptions initially being granted. While the court dismissed claims related to invasion of privacy and unlawful termination, the court held that the plaintiffs had plausibly pled their case enough to advance to discovery.

Wednesday September 27th: The Fourth Circuit upheld a lower decision dismissing a challenge to the Head Start’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate in Etherton v. Biden. Etherton, a prekindergarten teacher, challenged the federal vaccine mandate for all Head Start employees. However, the court held that because Etherton did not have any Head Start students in her class and her school district had a policy of not enforcing the mandate for such teachers, she had not actually been injured.

Thursday September 28th: The Washington Supreme Court upheld Governor Jay Inslee’s COVID-era ban on evictions in Gonzales v. Inslee. The plaintiffs, landlords in Washington, argued that the moratorium on rental evictions exceeded the emergency powers granted to the governor under the state constitution. The Court, however, held that the ban only applied to evictions, not paying rent, and therefore did not exceed the statutory language granting the governor his powers during emergencies.

Thursday September 28th: In Adams v. Mass General Brigham, the federal District Court of Massachusetts allowed the majority of claims to go forward in a case alleging that Mass General Brigham unfairly denied religious exemptions to some employees. The court held that a hospital vaccination policy that had no exemptions would have passed muster, but by deciding which employees would be exempted, the hospital had implicated the reasonable accommodation requirements of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Allowing some exemptions implied that some of the 154 plaintiffs could also have been exempted without creating undue hardship for the hospital, requiring individual analysis for each of the denials moving forward.

Friday September 29th: The motion for a temporary restraining order on New Mexico’s updated firearms ban was denied by the federal District Court of New Mexico in We the Patriots USA v. Grisham. As covered two weeks ago, the original ban on carrying firearms in public, declared as part of the gun violence public health emergency, had portions of it struck by a temporary restraining order brought by guns rights activists. However, the court held that the new version of the ban, which applies to places for children to play, is likely to pass muster, and a temporary restraining order is not warranted.