LAUSD parents can now file for damages from the illegal COVID vaccine mandates
LAUSD parents can now file for damages from the illegal COVID vaccine mandates
A judge has ruled that the LA Unified School District wasn't authorized to mandate the COVID vaccines or force kids into independent study. If you were injured, I can help you recover damages.
An important decision on vaccine mandates was just signed and released this morning.
The case was filed by a father on behalf of his son who attends the Science Academy STEM LAUSD magnet school. The lawyer in this case was Lee Andelin.
LAUSD will likely appeal the decision, but it’s unlikely they will prevail.
The decision means that:
LAUSD was wrong in requiring the COVID vaccines
For all but ten vaccines, a personal belief exemption must be respected.
LAUSD can no longer send kids away from their school and to independent study because they are not vaccinated.
Only the Department of Public Health can mandate vaccines, not the schools
The ruling applies to all students, not just the student filing the complaint
Parents whose children were injured, either by having to have their child vaccinated (regardless of whether your child has a vaccine injury or not) or whose child was shifted into independent study, now have an opportunity to sue for monetary damages.
If you are in the last category, please register here and I’ll let you know how you can join with other parents to preserve your rights and to potentially recover monetary damages.
Epilogue to the LAUSD decision: Yes, this case was successful. But LAUSD could still have appealed. It chose not to; in fact, LAUSD waived the right to appeal in a settlement reached with plaintiffs' counsel. So the trial court's decision against LAUSD--while successful in stopping LA's mandate--did not create binding precedent that other California attorneys could rely on in other jurisdictions.
Fortunately, however, Lee Andelin had simultaneously filed a nearly identical lawsuit against San Diego Unified for its attempted vaccination mandate on K12 students. In December 2021, Andelin won. San Diego Superior Court judge John Meyer GRANTED the injunction against the SDUSD, again on the authority grounds that the State wholly occupies the field of setting vax requirements for K12 attendance.
Stupidly--but fortuitously for plaintiffs--SDUSD appealed that ruling. This was a gift. Almost a full year later, in November 2022, the appellate court AFFIRMED the ruling, and the Court of Appeal certified the decision for publication. The case of Let Them Choose v. San Diego Unified will be enshrined in the law books to serve as binding authority for all California attorneys to cite to stop schools or districts from individually announcing vaccination requirements that differ from the State schedule.
Of course, the option existed for SDUSD to take the matter to the California Supreme Court. It did not. The time ticked by on that deadline to appeal the appellate ruling. At the eleventh hour, two non-parties came out of the woodwork and appeared before the Cal Supreme Court: former California state senator Richard Pan, and the firm of Young, Minney, and Corr, legal counsel for Granada Hills Charter and New West Charter.
You might remember that those charters schools, GHC and New West, had created their own vaccination mandates at the same time as SDUSD and LAUSD. But unlike SDUSD, whose mandate was blocked, and LAUSD, whose mandate was postponed by the school board, both GHC and New West forged ahead. They kicked kids out of school starting in January 2022. They barred them from setting foot on campus. They pulled them all sports, competitive teams, clubs, everything. They yanked them out of the coursework the students had started in the fall and shoved them into a dog's breakfast of "online learning" courses scrounged from third-party providers. This completely disrupted the two-semester courses they had signed up for. It ruined preparation for AP exams, and torpedoed some seniors' college admissions. And this was way worse than pandemic learning on Zoom--these unvaccinated students were isolated at home, with no teachers, friends, mentors, activities, spending hour upon hour in front of a screen, essentially self-teaching the topics, including Advanced Placement classes for graduating seniors. The emotional suffering and mental distress was off the charts. And in the most cruel insult to injury, both schools in June barred their unvaccinated seniors from walking in their own graduation ceremonies. (Please see my pinned thread on Twitter at @JenRevere for an hour-by-hour account of graduation day in June 2022.) https://twitter.com/JenRevere/status/1533500126701883392?s=20
These Charter Schools were, and remain, unrepentant. And their mandates STAND to this day. Why? Because unfortunately, in similar actions against them by Lee Andelin for Let Them Choose (and by Pacific Justice Institute on slightly different grounds), L.A. Superior Court Judge James Chalfant found FOR THE CHARTER SCHOOLS. His Honor bought off on the specious arguments that "independent charters" somehow float above California state education codes and, as nonprofits run by governing boards, may require vaccination that differs from State requirements as long as the board made a "business judgment" decision to do so. The entire school semester had trickled away as these cases were repeatedly delayed by the courts, and the final writ hearing didn't even occur until August, after graduation was long past. Let Them Choose opted to not file an appeal.
I digress. Fast forward to Richard Pan and GHC's having jumped into the SDUSD action as the clock ticked down for the opinion to be inked into legal history. Both Pan and GHC filed letter briefs to the California Supreme Court urging DEPUBLICATION of the victorious appellate decision.
Pan--the senator responsible for eliminating California's personal beliefs exemption to K12 vaccination with his SB277 bill in 2015--wanted to go back in time with revisionist retellings of legislative intent, and offer the Supreme Court hearsay explanations of why the California legislature really hadn't intended to create a statewide statutory scheme for all K12 vaccination requirements, but left the door open for individual schools to do whatever they wanted. Sure, Pan.
And tellingly, GHC's counsel in its letter brief urged the Supremes that if allowed to be published in the law books, the LTC v. SDUSD case might be--gasp!--used against charter schools like Granada Hills! GHC's lawyer--a young fellow named Lee Rosenberg who I'll wager has no children and even if so, no school-age children--spent 9 pages of single-spaced type to re-argue the merits and insist that the trial court had gotten it wrong. Mind you, the Supreme Court is not the place to do that. Rosenberg should have put the work into writing an amicus brief in support of SDUSD's appeal--but he didn't. (See Scott Davison's excellent Twitter thread on this at @scottyd121: https://twitter.com/scottyd121/status/1628915706095112197?s=20
In an extremely satisfying smackdown, Pan and Rosenberg LOST. Aaron Siri for plaintiffs filed a laser-focused opposition dismantling each of GHC's arguments. The Cal Supreme Court denied the requests to depublish, and affirmed that the ruling in the Let Them Choose v. SDUSD case will now stand as legal precedent in California to stop a school or district from announcing a vaccine requirement that differs from the state K12 schedule.
The only trouble is: GHC and New West aren't standing down. They think their trial court ruling protects them specifically. So the unvaccinated kids still enrolled at GHC and NWC are still sitting in their hellish homebound "independent study." And I just got word that GHC is once again refusing to sell them tickets to prom, which is held off campus, off course, in a venue with no vaccination requirement, just like the rest of the entire state of California. Will they once again deny the graduation ceremony?
This has never been about health or safety. It is about money, ego, control, and punishment. GHC and New West need to get hit with another lawsuit based on this precedent. I called Aaron Siri and spoke to a lovely paralegal to pitch this. I sure hope they call me back.
Hi Steve, I hope this reaching you well. I noticed this article posted near LAUSD schools and people have been pulling tabs to reach your substack. I hope they reach out to you and your team soon.