A U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck a huge victory for liberty this past Friday afternoon, when it resuscitated a lawsuit brought by conservative groups and individual school workers who refused to take a COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of employment.
Making the victory even sweeter, the opinion was handed down by the notoriously liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, against the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).
It also served as a warning that we all have a duty to remain vigilant and be ready to fight government abuses and encroachments of our fundamental rights.
On March 4, 2021, LAUSD mandated that all employees be vaccinated against COVID-19 or lose their job.
After employees filed a lawsuit against the district, LAUSD relaxed their mandate in a “clarifying” memo that permitted employees to be tested periodically instead of vaccination, and on that basis, the trial court dismissed the lawsuit as being moot.
Shortly after that, the LAUSD reinstated the vaccine mandate and the employees refiled their lawsuit.
On Sept. 2, 2022, U.S. District Court Judge Dale Fischer dismissed the employees’ lawsuit with prejudice (meaning it could not be refiled).
She relied on a 1905 U.S. Supreme Court decision that centered on a smallpox vaccination mandate, and two months later the employees filed their appeal with the Ninth Circuit.
The court found, in part that “on the merits, the district court misapplied the Supreme Court’s decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905), stretching it beyond its public health rationale. We vacate the district court’s order dismissing this claim and remand for further proceedings under the correct legal standard.”
The court further held that the mandate “interfered with their fundamental right to refuse medical treatment.”
Civil rights activist Tata Thornton was ecstatic.
“Massive victory out of California today against LAUSD C19 employee jab mandate!! Going into Friday night extra happpppy!” she said.
The Freedom Angels co-founder also expressed her thanks to the Health Freedom Defense Fund, who was a party to the lawsuit.
Leslie Manookian, president of Health Freedom Defense, also celebrated the victory.
“HUGE!!! WE WON our appeal against LAUSD,” she tweeted, and attached the organization’s statement. “9th Circuit Appeals Court vacated the district court decision. LAUSD’s C@v!d j@b$ mandate interfered with the ‘fundamental right to refuse medical treatment.’”
The decision wasn’t unanimous, however.
Judge Ryan D. Nelson drafted the opinion, and Judge Daniel P. Collins concurred.
Both Nelson and Collins were appointed to the Ninth Circuit by President Donald Trump.
Senior Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, a Clinton appointee, dissented.
Judicial appointments matter.
In 1961 a popular American screen and television actor could have predicted this very set of circumstances.
“One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine,” he said.
“It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project,” he added.
Twenty years later that actor, Ronald W. Reagan, would be inaugurated as the 40th president of the United States.
In 1964 Reagan remarked that “If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth.”
Accordingly, we have to fight tooth and nail against any government infringements on our liberty, otherwise they’ll keep chipping away and chipping away at it.
Reagan predicted that if that were to happen, “you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.”
With the Biden administration’s stance against First Amendment freedom of expression and religion, and its absolute distain for the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, we have to be especially vigilant, and vote accordingly.
Otherwise, all we may have left is our memories of “what it once was like in America when men were free.”
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to Newsmax. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter. Read Michael Dorstewitz’s Reports — More Here.
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