Riverside Federal Judge Denies Frontier Doctor’s Injunction Request against the UC COVID Mandate; Mandamus in the Court of Appeals Filed
On Friday, July 30, Riverside Federal Judge Jesse Bernal denied an injunction motion filed to stop the enforcement of the UC’s COVID mandate against students and employees who have previously had the disease. This was a strategically narrow lawsuit that excluded members of the UC community who have not had COVID. But narrow or not, the judge denied the injunction request. No surprises in the decision (especially if you have been reading my recent posts(Jacobson, the low to non-existent rational relationship standard, and it’s not the job of the courts to weigh challenges to accepted science, it’s the state’s call, yada, yada. Much shorter than the Indiana University district court’s opinion, but same result and reasoning. This is now the third federal district court that has rejected a COVID mandate. (The first being Houston district judge Lynn Hughes in the case against the Methodist Hospital mandate).
My friend and colleague Greg Glaser is involved and he has (amazingly) just filed for a mandamus in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Hope he does better than the IU students who lost in the Seventh Circuit. But like in that case, I think Greg is trying to put this before the Supremes, so I don’t think he’s expecting much from the Ninth Circuit, even though there are many more conservatives on the court than in the old days.
Here are Greg’s papers. The District Court’s opinion starts at around page 50 of the pdf.
AFLDS v UC – 9th Circuit Writ Filed (1)
Good Luck to you Greg!
Rick Jaffe, Esq.
3 thoughts on “Riverside Federal Judge Denies Frontier Doctor’s Injunction Request against the UC COVID Mandate; Mandamus in the Court of Appeals Filed”
God bless you, Mr Jaffe. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for not forgetting about us.
The judge seems to accept without question the UC’s decision to resume on-campus operations. Given the utilitarian basis for choosing public health over individual rights, wouldn’t the best public health outcome be achieved by NOT resuming on-campus operations at this time? The pandemic is far from over, and the latest reports indicate rising rates of infection, if less severe outcomes, among vaccinated persons. As more immune-evasive variants emerge, breakthrough cases will become more common and severe outcomes will inevitably follow. Booster shots might mitigate this problem, but their efficacy (and dangers) are unknown. Scan the UC Reddit board and you’ll find plenty of posts by vaccinated students getting Covid or concerned about getting ill after they return to the classroom. In short, UC’s policy is going to result in a lot of people getting unnecessarily sick. So it’s apparently OK for UC to engage in risky behavior, just not individual students. Perhaps that is not germane in this case, but it seems to me that money is the real driving factor behind UC’s policy, not protecting the “health of the community.”
UCD administration isn’t going back anytime soon. We were told 9/1 and just found out we are last to return as the priority is students and faculty. However, remote working employees still have to be in compliance by 9/8 regarding the Covid mandate. We will have to be tested every 4 days for Covid and if not done at campus, then will need to upload results to portal.