A group of dozens of Illinois correctional workers have filed suit to block Gov. JB Pritzker’s mandate forcing everyone who works in Illinois prisons and correctional treatment centers to either take a COVID vaccine, or get regularly tested for COVID, or risk losing their jobs.
The lawsuit further argues the state government cannot hide behind an arbitration victory over the workers’ union to justify enforcing the mandates, with no concern for the individual workers’ due process rights under state law.
Christian County is located just southeast of Springfield, and is home to the Taylorville Correctional Center.
Workers in the lawsuit are employed at state prisons and treatment centers in Joliet, Centralia, Dixon, East Moline, Pontiac, Canton and near Lincoln and Springfield, among others.
The lawsuit takes aim at the COVID vaccine mandate issued by Pritzker, directing the Illinois Department of Corrections to require all workers to receive a COVID vaccine or submit to regular COVID testing, as a condition of employment. Any workers who refuse to either get vaccinated against COVID, or get regularly tested, could be subject to termination, according to the state orders.
However, in their lawsuit, the workers argue this mandate is illegal. They assert neither the governor nor the IDOC have the authority under state law to lay down such a mandate.
Rather, they argue, the power to force workers to get vaccinated or submit to testing, against their will, is given solely to state and local public health departments. And, according to the complaint, that law also grants due process rights to people who wish to object and challenge any such vaccination or testing orders.
To this point, the complaint said, the state has ignored and trampled on those due process rights.
While the correctional employees’ union objected, an arbitrator late last year sided with the state, saying the vaccination and testing mandates could be mandated. The union and the state then negotiated various terms governing the way in which workers and the union would comply with the mandate.
In a second arbitration award issued Jan. 19, the arbitrator agreed to extend that mandate also to any “visitors, vendors and other non-employees” entering Illinois’ correctional facilities. In that award, the arbitrator specifically said he believed “overwhelming scientific evidence shows that the vaccines are effective and safe and the best method to prevent infection” from COVID.
He further claimed he believed the mandate was urgently needed because the virus was out of control in Illinois, and “the worst is apparently yet to come.”
After the award, however, the COVID surge quickly ended, leading to the relaxing of many remaining COVID restrictions statewide. While cases have crept up in recent days, Illinois’ COVID numbers remain far below the heights of the so-called delta and omicron surges.
However, the state and other Illinois governments, including the city of Chicago, have continued to push their vaccine-or-test mandates.
Those mandates have continued to generate lawsuits challenging them.
DeVore recently won a temporary restraining order against Chicago Public Schools, blocking the imposition of the mandates against CPS employees.
In that order, a Springfield judge specifically ruled CPS, as a governmental agency, lacks the authority under state law and under a collective bargaining agreement with a union, to force workers to receive a COVID vaccine or submit to regular COVID testing, at the risk of losing their jobs.
“The Legislature has already delegated matters related to vaccination, testing, masking, and other measures intended to mitigated infectious disease to IDPH,” Sangamon County Judge Raylene Grischow wrote in her order. “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/or testing in the same way.”
In the same vein, DeVore and the correctional workers he is representing say the governor and the IDOC lack authority under state law to impose such mandates, and no collective bargaining agreement or arbitration award should allow them to sidestep the due process rights of workers.
“The rights of individuals provided to them under the law cannot be waived by the collective representation of the union,” DeVore wrote in the complaint.
In a footnote, he added: “The State Employees have the same rights as every citizen of this state to be free from being forced to comply with public health policy that the rest of the citizenry has a right to object to.
“The employment relationship between the Plaintiffs and the state agency is merely the tool of coercion being utilized by the Defendants (Pritzker and the IDOC), but this Court should not be fooled as this issue has nothing to do with employment.”
The IDOC workers are also asking the court to award them a temporary restraining order blocking enforcement of the mandate immediately.
A hearing on the TRO is scheduled for Friday, April 15.