The lawyer who has spearheaded the fight against school mask mandates and other COVID rules has returned to court, now asking a Springfield judge to block the Chicago Public Schools from enforcing its COVID vaccine mandate for teachers and school staff.
On March 10, attorney Tom DeVore filed a motion in Sangamon County Circuit Court in Springfield, requesting Judge Raylene Grischow issue a temporary restraining order against CPS.
DeVore, of Silver Lake Legal, of downstate Greenville, filed the motion on behalf of at least six educators employed by CPS.
The motion challenges CPS’ mandate, requiring staff to either receive a COVID-19 vaccination or agree to submit to regular COVID testing, or face losing their jobs after March 11.
According to the motion, two of the plaintiffs have already been threatened with suspension by CPS. The remaining four named plaintiffs have agreed to submit to the testing, DeVore said.
In the motion, DeVore asserts CPS’ vaccination mandate amounts to “an unlawful vaccination or testing policy.”
According to the motion, the vaccination policy violates CPS employees’ rights to due process under Illinois law.
DeVore recently sought another restraining order against CPS over the Chicago schools’ student mask mandates.
In that petition, filed at the end of February, DeVore similarly argued CPS’ policies, requiring students to wear masks while in school, in the name of slowing the spread of COVID-19, violated students’ due process rights under Illinois law.
CPS had famously refused to lift its mask mandate, even after Judge Grischow in early February had issued a restraining order. In that decision, Grischow ruled Gov. JB Pritzker had illegally imposed the statewide masking rules, by giving certain powers to state agencies that had not received those powers by law, and by refusing to abide by due process protections contained in Illinois law. The judge said students, parents and educators were never given the opportunity to object to what amounted to so-called modified quarantine orders.
That order was vacated as moot by the Illinois Supreme Court, after a committee of Illinois state lawmakers refused to allow Pritzker to renew his school COVID rules after they expired following Grischow’s ruling.
However, neither the Illinois Supreme Court nor a state appellate court granted Pritzker’s request to overturn the legal reasoning in Grischow’s ruling.
Amid the appeals in February, CPS leaders continued to defy Grischow’s ruling, and to require students to mask. CPS asserted it had the authority to require the masks, because those rules had been negotiated amid a work stoppage orchestrated by the Chicago Teachers Union in January. They said those contract talks should also legally apply to students and others, even though they were not parties to the negotiations.
That defiance prompted DeVore to file a motion for a restraining order against CPS, to block the mask rules.
Within days of that filing, CPS announced it was removing the student mask mandate, despite the opposition of the CTU. The union has filed a grievance against CPS, as the union seeks to reimpose the mask mandates.
Following CPS’ action, DeVore withdrew his motion for TRO against the mask mandates.
He then filed his new TRO request on behalf of CPS teachers, who assert the vaccine or test mandate again violates their rights. They follow the same reasoning DeVore presented to Grischow in the larger litigation over school COVID rules.
A hearing on the motion against the vaccine or test mandate has been set for Tuesday, March 15.