CHICAGO — A federal judge once again has kneecapped a lawsuit from Chicago city workers seeking to halt city and state vaccine mandates.
In an opinion issued Dec. 21, U.S. District Judge John Z. Lee denied a preliminary injunction requested by more than 100 Chicago fire, water and transportation department employees. Those workers sued in October to stop Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Lori Lightfoot from ordering them to be vaccinated and tested for COVID-19 or risk losing their jobs.
Lee had denied a temporary restraining order in October, but the workers asked to proceed with their request for an injunction. In so doing, they said the COVID policies “violate their rights to bodily autonomy as protected by the constitutional doctrines of substantive due process, procedural due process and free exercise of religion” while also invoking the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act.
The workers declined discovery and didn’t present witnesses, but did get Lee to grant their request to file a supplemental brief to support their pursuit of an injunction. Their request could succeed, Lee explained, if they could show a likelihood of prevailing at a trial, if they could demonstrate irreparable harm absent the injunction and if they could show how judicial intervention serves the public interest.
Lee said his reasoning was unaltered from the denial of the temporary restraining order. He pointed to a U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals opinion from earlier this year, Klaasen v. Trustees of Indiana University, rejecting students’ challenge to their school’s vaccination, masking and testing rules.
That opinion, Lee explained, relied on a 1905 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts to establish plaintiffs lack a fundamental right to overturn a vaccine mandate during a pandemic. That led to reviewing the city workers’ arguments in the context of whether the government acted rationally in imposing such rules.
“The plaintiff must prove irrationality,” Lee wrote. “The question is not whether plaintiffs have the better argument — it is whether there is any rational justification for the policies at issue.”
The government argued vaccination requirement for health care workers and public employees is in the interest of reducing the spread of COVID-19. Its lawyers “submitted credible evidence to justify these policies — in particular, declarations from the public health officials who designed and implemented them,” Lee wrote. “These medical professionals explain in great detail how health care workers and city employees face increased risks of contracting and transmitting COVID-19, and how requiring vaccination will reduce those risks — both to the employees themselves and to the public with whom they come into contact."
Lee said the workers didn’t successfully rebut those justifications when pushing for the restraining order “and their arguments fare no better now.” He said the supplemental brief “contains little if any legal argument” and attempted to win with scientific data contrasting the government’s evidence. Lee said that doesn’t open the door to second-guessing policy decisions. If there is a debate, Lee said, that only supports the position the public policies aren’t arbitrary or irrational.
“Even on the most generous reading of their evidence,” Lee wrote, “plaintiffs have shown only the existence of some scientific debate surrounding the degree of immunity provided by vaccines and whether ‘natural immunity’ from prior COVID-19 infection provides comparable (or, as plaintiffs assert, superior) protection from the virus.”
Lee also rejected arguments challenging Pritzker’s executive order as improper, and noted the Eleventh Amendment bars federal lawsuits alleging state officials violated state laws while carrying out official duties. He also said their due process claims failed because they didn’t allege “specific procedural shortcomings,” nor did they say any of them were fired or even disciplined under the order.
The workers’ claims against Lightfoot failed on similar grounds, Lee continued, while also failing to address how a city vaccination policy would unconstitutionally alter their union contracts. Lee further said their claims of being denied a free exercise of religion fail because no one alleged they applied for an exemption from the state policy, “let alone have been denied one.” Those who did apply to be exempt from the city policy didn’t provide an explanation of how their religion conflicts with the rules.
The Health Care Right of Conscience Act claims failed under the governor’s Eleventh Amendment protection, Lee said, and “because the City Vaccination Policy’s religious exemption neatly tracks the definition of a protected religious belief under HCRCA.”
Should any of the employees be terminated under a policy later found at trial to be unconstitutional, Lee explained, the harm would not be irreparable, but could be addressed with reinstatement and back pay.
Finally, Lee said he, as have “numerous other courts,” determined “the public’s interest in reducing the transmission of COVID-19 weighs heavily against granting an injunction.”
The city workers are represented by Skokie lawyer Jonathan Lubin.
The city of Chicago is defended by Michael A. Warner Jr., William R. Pokorny, Erin Kathryn Walsh and Richard Jason Patterson, of the Chicago firm of Franczek Radelet. City corporate counsel Celia Meza also is defending the city.
The state is defended by Assistant Illinois Attorneys General Hal Dworkin and Mary Alice Johnston.