A state appeals panel has vacated a restraining order blocking the Chicago Public Schools from taking action against employees who do not wish to comply with the school district’s mandate requiring workers to either get a COVID vaccine or submit to regular COVID tests, or potentially get fired.
Grischow had ruled on April 8, forbidding the school district from continuing to enforce its vaccination mandates for people working in Chicago’s public schools.
In that ruling, Grischow said CPS lacked authority under either state law or within the context of a collective bargaining agreement with the Chicago Teachers Union to enforce such a mandate.
Rather, Grischow ruled state law invests such power only in the Illinois Department of Public Health and other local public health departments.
“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,” Grischow wrote in that order.
The restraining order had been sought by attorney Tom DeVore, of Silver Lake Legal Group, of downstate Greenville, on behalf of a group of CPS educators.
The Fourth District justices agreed with Grischow that CPS lacks the authority to impose public health regulations.
But in this case, they said, CPS’ mandate amounted to workplace safety rules imposed to reduce the spread of an infectious disease within schools. Therefore, they said, Grischow was incorrect to rule CPS had violated the educators’ liberty or due process rights by forcing them to get vaccinated, or submit to regular testing, with no recourse other than losing their jobs.
Further, because the tests CPS employees are required to take are free of cost to them, are not “painful” or “invasive,” and can be taken during paid work hours, the justices said they did not believe the mandate to be “unreasonable.”
“Based on the immense powers held by unelected public officials within the (Illinois Department of Public Health), it appears the General Assembly providently required the Department to obtain a court order in situations involving liberty interests before it could enforce its orders against nonconsenting individuals,” the justices wrote.
But the justices said CPS “is not vested with these broad powers, nor is it trying to exercise them.
“Instead, it has adopted workplace rules for the protection of students and school employees. At issue in this case is a policy that only applies to defendant’s employees.”
The ruling was issued by Fourth District Justice John W. Turner. Justices Sheldon Harris and Lisa Holder White concurred in the ruling vacating Grischow’s TRO against CPS.
The decision was issued as an unpublished order under Supreme Court Rule 23, which limits its use as precedent. In the decision, the justices make clear their decision should apply only to the facts of this case.
However, the decision marked the second time in less than a week that a Fourth District Appellate panel had ruled vaccine-or-test mandates imposed on Illinois public employees are “workplace safety rules” that skirt the due process protections otherwise afforded to people in Illinois under the Illinois Department of Public Health Act.
In an earlier ruling, issued April 14, a different panel of three Fourth District justices upheld a decision by Sangamon County Judge Jennifer Ascher refusing to grant a TRO to firefighters, teachers and other public employees challenging a vaccine mandate issued by Gov. JB Pritzker.
In that ruling, the appeals court ruled such employer vaccine mandates do not amount to “modified quarantine” that would fall under the due process limits imposed by the IDPH Act.
Both legal challenges against the vaccine mandates are continuing in Sangamon County Circuit Court. However, the justices in both cases expressed doubts over the likelihood of ultimate success for those challenging the mandates.