Win in Court for Individual Medical Freedom

Health Freedom Defense Fund and employees of the Los Angeles Unified School District sued LAUSD officials including Superintendent Alberto Carvalho in 2021 in a little-covered case about the district-imposed mandate requiring employees get COVID-19 injections. Plaintiffs and defendants batted the individual health freedom issue back and forth for the last three years. The pattern of behavior that LAUSD exhibited towards its employees and the courts throughout this time has led to a U.S. Appellate Court decision in the employees’ favor. 

By ruling to “vacate” and “remand,” a 3-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Court on June 7 reversed a lower court’s dismissal of the case Health Freedom Def. Fund, Inc. v. Carvalho. Health Freedom Defense Fund was joined by California Educators for Medical Freedom and several school workers in the country’s second largest school system. The decision’s findings put Superintendent Carvalho and staff on notice against violating employees’ medical liberty. (READ MORE: The Most Influential Dissidents in Sports During the Biden Regime) 

The court’s finding in the case means that even the State of California’s vision of schools as “one stop centers” for activism and socialized pharmaceutical utopia must not tread over the sovereign rights of the people who work at and attend schools. The majority of the panel’s judges recognized that Americans’ jobs and future professional prospects may have been unduly damaged by LAUSD’s medical mandate, and that the district may be tried for accountability. 

In the decision, Judge Nelson and Judge Collins of the Ninth Circuit panel addressed both the legal procedures and the merits of the case:

Litigants who have already demonstrated their willingness to tactically manipulate the federal courts in this way should not be given any benefit of the doubt. LAUSD’s about-face occurred only after vigorous questioning at argument in this court, which suggests that it was motivated, at least in part, by litigation tactics … Comments [of the chair of the School Board Dr. McKenna and additional Board Members] show that the Board was aware of, and responding to, the pending litigation. LAUSD therefore is no longer entitled to any presumption of regularity.

Addressing the merits, the panel held that the district court misapplied the Supreme Court’s decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905)…. Taking plaintiffs’ allegations as true at this stage of litigation, plaintiffs plausibly alleged that the COVID-19 vaccine does not effectively “prevent the spread” of COVID-19. Thus, Jacobson does not apply…. Plaintiffs’ allegations here are sufficient to invoke that fundamental right [to refuse medical treatment].

Following the ruling, Leslie Manookian, the founder of Health Freedom Defense Fund, discussed the case on a podcast with pharmaceutical executive Sasha Latypova. Manookian said the decision appears to her and other lawyers observing the case to represent a “legal earthquake.” Because the Ninth Circuit Court has been “extensively involved in bodily autonomy cases throughout recent history pertaining to abortion,” Manookian pointed out that the court “cannot have it both ways.”

Manookian further expounded on how multiple ongoing legal cases interrelate to one another in regard to the people’s Constitutional rights. She noted that the overthrowing of “Chevron deference” could enhance citizen protections in disputes with bureaucrats over medical mandates. With the ending of Chevron, courts should now uphold the centrality of the citizen’s right to self-rule, as the American founding has long prioritized. 

These decisions, says the plaintiff, provide a season to celebrate individual citizens’ climb once again to the top rung of the law, above bureaucratic governments. The Health Freedom Defense Fund wrote, responding to the Carvalho decision:

The Ninth Circuit ruling today demonstrates that the court saw through LAUSD’s monkey business, and in so doing, it made clear that Americans’ cherished rights to self determination, including the sacred right of bodily autonomy in matters of health, are not negotiable. This is a great triumph for the truth, decency, and what is right.

The dissemination of bodily autonomy legal decisions to citizens and employees to whom it may be relevant, of course, relies on another fundamental American right, the freedom of speech and expression. The fate of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech and an uncensored populace rides on several active cases. This week, the state of Missouri’s anti-censorship lawsuit against Biden officials was remanded to lower courts, while a suit by presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and one by social media competitor Brighteon continue to progress through the legal system. (READ MORE: What Is Fueling Public Schools’ Book-Weeding?)

Americans in all occupations, from the educational environments where our children attend to the corporate world, have the right to make and voice their choices in matters of health, medications, and pharmaceuticals. Defenders of liberty in court are pillars for the free republic, stalwartly facing the gates of tyranny.

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