BREAKING NEWS! UC MAKES A TACTICAL RETREAT WITH ITS NEW EXECUTIVE ORDER, AND IT’S GOOD NEWS FOR STUDENTS, (albeit temporary and only for some students)
As you know, Bobby Kennedy and I (with the able assistance of CHD’s chief legal guru Mary Holland, PIC’s human vaccine encyclopedia a/k/a Greg Glaser, and SD ace litigator Ray Flores) filed an injunction lawsuit to stop the UC’s executive order requiring all students, faculty and other employees to get the flu shot by November 1 on pain of not being able to work or register for class. We filed on August 27th, the executive order having been published on August 7th.
On September 17th, we filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to stop the EO. The most outrageous part of the EO and the part which befits the constitutional phrase of something which “shocks the conscience” was the fact that students were treated differently from faculty and staff in two important respects: First, unlike staff and faculty, students did not have a “religious accommodation” (and more about that later). Second, while faculty could remote teach and staff could remote work and not have to take the shot, remote learning students still had to get the stick. That seemed to me to be a textbook equal protection and First Amendment violation. Whatever idiot UC lawyer came up with that should have to take some con law CLE (continuing legal education).
Well, it seems like the UC has finally opened its con law books (and with all its law school libraries, it’s about time).
The UC filed its response to our motion (and there are a lot of papers, but more about that later) AND GUESS WHAT?
TWO DAYS AGO, THE UC (apparently secretly so far) ISSUED A NEW EO REVISING THE MANDATE!
Here it is:
and guess what it doesn’t have in it?
correct, students are now treated the same as faculty and staff (sort of).
bottom line, students attending all classes online who do not live on campus do not have to get the flu shot. That is very good news for those students. Of course, if you live on campus, you still have to get the shot, at least unless and until the judge in the cases grants our preliminary injunction motion.
For perspective, this is just the opening skirmish (ok, maybe a tad bit more than that; the UC backed down probably after reviewing our fourth cause of action for equal protection violations on behalf of the students) This was a just tactical retreat for the UC. They gave up something to protect the core mandate requiring the flu vaccine for everyone who comes to the campuses.
TWO OTHER BREAKING NEWS POINTS IN THIS CASE
First, the UC is setting up in effect religious inquisition courts, but with no published court procedures
That’s right and it is just as insane as the now eliminated equal protection violations.
The UC has apparently hired outside consultants to function as judges deciding on the bona fides of people seeking a religious accommodation to the flu shot. Really, you have to appeal before some consultant to make the case that your religious beliefs are the right kind, or you have the sufficient fervor to justify the UC bestowing on you whatever it has in mind as a religious accommodation. So what are the standards these consultant judge use? I don’t think anyone knows so far. It must be some secret set of criteria. So, maybe the UC should go back to its libraries and look up the First Amendment and something called due process and do something it hasn’t done yet. Think about what you’re doing and the path you’re going down, because as stated, this is just as crazy as the discrimination against students, only it affects the entire UC community.
If anyone has gone through or is planning to appear at these religious inquisition courts, please shoot me an email, because I think the judge is really going to want to hear from you, and I don’t think he’s going to like it one bit.
Second, we now know (sort of) how this flu mandate came about and who was in charge.
One of the many declarations filed in response to our motion was from the UC head of the COVID tracing and tracking committee from which the mandate emanated. Her name is Dr. Carrie Byington who is an Executive Vice President, UC Health, and Professor of Pediatric Infectious Disease at UC SF. She has a very impressive resume and a long career in infectious disease. I am attaching her declaration. If anyone reading this post has any information about how this whole thing came about, and the statements contained in Dr. Byington’s declaration, please email me with details. Here it is byingtondeclaration. To anyone with such knowledge, you’ll know what I am referring to. To all else, stay tuned.
Rick Jaffe, Esq,
rickjaffeesquire@gmail.com
4 thoughts on “BREAKING NEWS! UC MAKES A TACTICAL RETREAT WITH ITS NEW EXECUTIVE ORDER, AND IT’S GOOD NEWS FOR STUDENTS, (albeit temporary and only for some students)”
Wonderful news on the students being able to use the religious exemption and limiting to “on premise” for UC people. Great work Rick and your entire team. AMAZING.
They need to define 2020_2021 Flu Season in their new EO. Because it is contradictory by saying if you don’t get the Shot you can not go to campus the “academic year of 2020_2021.”
Flu season ends march/April? So if on campus learning opens for spring then what are students to do? Get a very late shot for absolutly no reason? Unless they have new magical definition for flu season which is ” flu season has now become year round.”
Thank you for your work on this UC mess!
Dr. Byington’s Declaration reminds me of something a doctor told me: “Doctors learn to think about diseases and disorders in certain ways during medical school, and some of them never go beyond those ways of thinking. They are like time capsules of the medical knowledge that was current when they finished their medical training.”
Dr. B’s Declaration reads as though she is a time capsule of what was known, propounded, and predicted about SARS CoV-2 and COVID-19 back in February. She says it’s a novel virus so no one has significant pre-existing immunity — ignoring the evidence that many people (perhaps as many as 80% of the population) have pre-existing immunity (perhaps T cell immunity?) due to previous exposures to other coronaviruses. She cites an antibody prevalence study to claim only a very small percent of the population has been exposed to COVID-19, ignoring the discovery that asymptomatic and mild cases of COVID-19 don’t lead to antibody production; and antibody levels fall off quickly in any case. She ignores the fact that inexpensive, effective prophylaxis and early treatment protocols have been developed, and effective (though expensive) later-stage treatment protocols have been developed, too. She writes as though there’s a real threat of medical facilities being overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients or COVID-19 patients plus flu patients, though this hasn’t happened anywhere in the U.S. except NYC months ago. She recites the old tired propaganda about the efficacy and safety of flu shots.
She doesn’t acknowledge that the U.S. incidence of COVID-19 dropped below CDC “epidemic” levels months ago, and that our current rising case numbers aren’t being matched by corresponding increases in hospitalizations and deaths. Oh dear, the pandemic is over and she doesn’t realize it! I’m afraid she locked her brain down too hard in February or early March, and hasn’t been able to learn anything new about the virus or the illness since then…
Where has UC published the revised executive order? And if it not ‘public,’ what is the reason? How are students, staff, and faculty able to make informed choices without knowledge of this change in policy?