A group of firefighters and paramedics in Naperville have joined the ranks of those now suing to challenge mandates being put in place throughout the state, following the lead of Gov. JB Pritzker, requiring a host of workers to get vaccinated, submit to weekly COVID testing, or potentially lose their jobs.
“Literally before we had sufficient data to know how susceptible a given individual was to COVID-19, and before we had come to an understanding of how dangerous the virus was, paramedics were the front line of America’s response to COVID-19,” the paramedics said in their complaint.
“Now, the State of Illinois and the City of Naperville is threatening to terminate its firefighter/paramedics unless they agree to take a vaccine … or submit to weekly testing for COVID-19 despite the fact that many paramedics impacted have already contracted COVID-19, and are therefore largely immune to it already.”
The lawsuit was filed in Chicago federal court on Sept. 23. The Naperville firefighter paramedics are represented by attorney Jonathan Lubin, of Skokie.
The complaint challenges a mandate imposed last month by the city of Naperville, requiring all employees in the Naperville Fire Department to receive a full dose of a COVID vaccine, or submit to regular weekly testing. Those who do not abide by either of the mandates would not be allowed to report for work, and could be placed on administrative leave without pay, according to the complaint.
However, the paramedics assert the vaccine and testing mandates violate their “fundamental rights” to both bodily autonomy and due process, denying them the opportunity challenge the mandate on an individual basis, or even the chance to be object in any meaningful way.
With such rights implicated, the complaint said, the mandate must be tailored in a narrow way that promotes a “compelling government interest.”
“In this case, the mandate at issue is not narrowly tailored to forward a compelling government interest,” the complaint said. “Vaccinating people is not a compelling government interest in and of itself.”
The complaint further asserts the vaccination and testing mandate comes even as COVID-19 appears to have waned significantly, particularly compared to the condition in which the state found itself months ago.
Even at its worst, neither the state nor the city of Naperville ever required paramedics to submit to weekly testing, or vaccinations, once such inoculations became available and widespread in 2021.
The complaint asserts the testing requirement was merely included essentially as a stick with which to punish “those who assert their fundamental rights.”
They note many people working in their department have already recovered from prior COVID-19 infections. They point to research conducted by the National Institutes of Health and by researchers in Israel, showing that those who have recovered from COVID-19 carry durable natural immunity, equivalent to or greater than the immunity provided by the approved COVID-19 vaccines.
And they note the state and Naperville vaccination mandates make no allowance for such documented natural immunity.
“Given that many paramedics have already caught and recovered from COVID-19, singling out those who are not vaccinated against COVID-19 is neither narrowly tailored to nor (rationally) related to forwarding the interest of preserving the life and health of Illinois’ citizens,” the paramedics complaint says.
“Those who have not had COVID-19, and whose immunity comes from vaccination, are at a much greater risk of catching and transmitting COVID-19 to others than those who remain unvaccinated but who have natural immunity,” the paramedics say.
The lawsuit asks the federal court to declare the paramedics “have a fundamental right to their bodily autonomy, and to make health decisions in accordance with their beliefs and conscience; that Naperville and Pritzker have violated the paramedics’ constitutional rights; and that the mandates exceed the constitutional authority granted to the governor and the city.
They have asked the court to issue an injunction in line with those findings, barring Pritzker and the city of Naperville from enforcing their vaccination and testing mandates.
The Naperville lawsuit follows a lawsuit filed in Kane County Circuit Court by a group of teachers and other public school employees in St. Charles and Geneva, also seeking to thwart the ability of their taxpayer-funded employer from enforcing a similar vaccination and testing mandate.