A Springfield judge has blocked the Chicago Public Schools’ vaccinate-or-test mandate, saying school districts, like CPS, lack authority under state law or under a collective bargaining agreement with a teachers union, to force workers to receive a COVID vaccine or submit to regular COVID testing, at the risk of losing their jobs.
On April 8, Sangamon County Judge Raylene Grischow issued a temporary restraining order, forbidding CPS from continuing to enforce its vaccination mandates for people working in Chicago’s public schools.
Judge Grischow said state law only empowers school districts to issue vaccination and testing rules in line with orders and guidance issued by the state, through the Illinois Department of Public Health.
Since no such orders and rules from Gov. JB Pritzker and the IDPH were in place when CPS imposed its vaccine-or-test rules on its employees, CPS’ rules can’t be enforced under the law, the judge said.
“The broad power referenced in the Illinois School Code gives the (CPS board) authority for the maintenance, operation, and development of their schools,” Judge Grischow wrote in her order. “While there is one referenced provision regarding infectious disease, this provision concerns children who actually have an infectious disease.
“The maintaining, operation, development, management, and governance of the school district does not encompass issues of vaccination or testing of school personnel in order to protect the public health from the spread of an infectious disease when it has not been mandated by the IDPH.
“Public health matters have been specifically delegated by the Legislature to IDPH,” Grischow wrote.
The ruling comes nearly a month since attorney Tom DeVore, of Silver Lake Legal, of downstate Greenville, filed suit against CPS on behalf of a group of CPS educators.
DeVore filed a motion asking Grischow for a TRO blocking enforcement of the vaccination and testing mandate. In that motion, DeVore argued CPS’ mandate amounts to “an unlawful vaccination or testing policy,” that violates CPS employees’ rights to due process under Illinois law.
The motion for restraining order was built on legal reasoning similar to that DeVore used to secure an earlier TRO from Judge Grischow, blocking Pritzker from continuing to enforce his school mask mandate.
In that earlier ruling, Grischow ruled 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 earlier TRO against masking 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. The decision from the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules came after 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.
CPS has publicly refused to abide by Grischow’s rulings. CPS has asserted it has the power to impose whatever COVID-related rules it wishes to against students and teachers, alike, because that authority had been negotiated with the Chicago Teachers Union amid a work stoppage orchestrated by the CTU in January.
That defiance prompted DeVore to file a motion seeking a new TRO against CPS, which he withdrew after CPS abruptly announced it was removing the student mask mandate, over objections from the CTU.
He then filed his new TRO request on behalf of CPS teachers, which Grischow granted.
In that ruling, Grischow specifically addressed the question of whether the CTU collective bargaining agreement should allow CPS to ignore the due process rights granted to Illinois residents by the state law known as the Illinois Department of Public Health Act.
Judge Grischow specifically rejected that assertion.
“The Legislature has already delegated matters related to vaccination, testing, masking, and other measures intended to mitigated infectious disease to IDPH,” Grischow wrote. “There is no independent authority granted to either the Governor or the collective bargaining organizations on this topic.
“… The Legislature has chosen to require that certain disputes surrounding working conditions can only be resolved through collective bargaining and arbitration. It has not chosen to treat the subjects of disease mitigation, vaccination and/ore testing in the same way.”
From there, Grischow said CPS exceeded its authority in instituting its own vaccine and testing mandate, as a condition of employment.
While CPS argued its powers come from the state’s School Code, she said that state law does not give school districts the authority to simply ignore workers’ rights to due process under the IDPH Act, and act independently of rules issued by the IDPH.
Further, she noted a different provision of state law expressly forbids school districts from taking steps to fire teachers during a time of disaster, as declared by the governor, under the Illinois Emergency Management Agency Act. Pritzker has persistently cited the emergency powers granted to him under the IEMA Act when issuing executive orders to address the COVID pandemic for more than two years.
Grischow noted Pritzker’s political allies in the Democrat-dominated General Assembly have taken no steps to change the law to strip the due process protections from the IDPH Act.
“The Legislature understood that during times like these, liberty interests were at stake and as such provided due process under the law for citizens to rely upon,” Grischow wrote. “… If the Legislature was of the opinion that the public health laws as written were insufficient to protect public health from COVID, it had since March 2020 to revise the law.
“Given the Legislature has chosen not to do so, this Court must conclude the laws which have long been in place to protect the competing interests of individual liberty and public health satisfactorily balance these interests.”
Grischow ruled her order would remain in effect until a full trial can be held on the claims against CPS.