A group of high school parents who are challenging Gov. JB Pritzker’s ability to use COVID emergency powers to cancel high school sports at will, and to force high school athletes in the state to wear masks when competing, have revised their lawsuit again, to thwart what they believe to be a forthcoming attempt by Pritzker and others to force all high school students in the state to take the COVID jab to attend school or play sports.
On Jan. 3, attorney Laura Grochocki, of Chicago, filed an amended complaint in Sangamon County Circuit Court in Springfield, now asking the court to also enter orders forbidding the state or school districts from making COVID vaccinations compulsory for students in Illinois.
“When it becomes politically expedient for him to do so in the future, and because it is important, politically, that he appears to be in control of the spread of a virus that it is impossible to control the spread of, Governor Pritzker, acting through … (the Illinois Department of Public Health, will impose a COVID-19 vaccine mandate on high school students and athletes in the near future even though there is no legitimate medical or public health reason for him to do so, and doing so will not have an (sic) rational basis in mitigating against the COVID-19 pandemic,” the plaintiffs wrote in their updated complaint.
And when that happens, the plaintiffs said, the state’s largest school districts and the Illinois High School Association, which oversees high school athletics in the state, “will all comply with these rules and regulations,” the complaint said.
The complaint asserts any potential vaccine mandate would violate high school students’ rights, because requiring the vaccine would amount to an “arbitrary” and “irrational” response to the pandemic, driven by politics, and would have no real world impact on the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
The lawsuit dates back to December 2020. At that time, the parents, who are still listed as plaintiffs on the action, claimed their children had suffered under Pritzker’s decision at the time to unilaterally forbid most high school sports from being played in the fall and winter of 2020-2021.
One of the parents, for instance, asserts her son, a track and field athlete, class president, and drum major at Seneca High School in downstate LaSalle County, committed suicide in October 2020, after Pritzker ordered high school sports shut down.
The lawsuit blamed Pritzker for the young man’s suicide.
Other parents claimed in the lawsuit that their children had lapsed into depression, developed anger issues, and refused to leave their houses for a time, as a result of the mental effects they suffered following the governor’s shutdown orders. They also claimed the shutdown orders cost students the opportunity to secure college athletic scholarships.
The lawsuit was initially filed in LaSalle County court, but was transferred by the Illinois Supreme Court, at Pritzker’s request, to Sangamon County court in Springfield, where virtually all lawsuits challenging the governor’s nearly two-year-long claim to emergency pandemic powers have been sent.
The parents’ lawsuit, however, has since survived attempts by Gov. Pritzker and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul to dismiss it.
The lawsuit now has been revised twice.
After Pritzker relented, and allowed high school sports to resume in the spring of 2021, the lawsuit was amended to include language challenging Pritzker’s ability to order high school athletic mask mandates.
And now, the lawsuit has been amended again, in response to the rise of vaccine mandates issued by governments in Illinois and elsewhere in the U.S.
The state has not yet ordered all school students or even all student athletes to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to compete, or required high school students to receive a COVID vaccine.
Further, on Jan. 11, Chicago’s top public health official, Dr. Allison Arwady, told Chicago city aldermen that there wasn’t yet any plan to require COVID vaccinations as a condition of attending school in Chicago.
As reported by Block Club Chicago, Arwady compared attending school to shopping for food at supermarkets, saying she believed children have the right to an education, regardless of their parents’ decision to vaccinate them against COVID-19 or not.
However, the city of Chicago and Cook County health departments have each issued orders requiring everyone over the age of 5 to show proof of vaccination to enter a host of indoor venues in the city, including restaurants, theaters, museums, and health and fitness centers, such as those used for indoor youth sports and recreation. And Pritzker has spoken in favor of local governments issuing such so-called vaccine passport requirements, to pressure people into taking the COVID vaccines.
The high school parents’ lawsuit further asserts, given their track record on sports cancellations and mask mandates, there is a strong likelihood Pritzker and others will move to require COVID vaccines for school attendance and participation in high school sports, among other activities.
They assert such a mandate, along with the mask mandates and allegedly illegal school sports cancellations, violate the students’ rights to due process and equal protection under the U.S. and Illinois constitutions.
The lawsuit seeks orders specifically barring Pritzker, the IDPH, IDPH director Ngozi Ezike, the Chicago Public Schools and Rockford Public Schools from entering any such vaccine mandate, and barring them from enforcing mask mandates on high school athletes and students in Illinois, or from further cancelling high school sports.