As you may remember, we represent a 16 year old Scripps Ranch High School student and her parents in a case against San Diego Unified School District over their unconstitutional vaccine mandate. Our clients are opposed to the Covid-19 vaccines because they were all either made or tested using aborted fetal cells. Our clients are firmly pro-life and refuse to benefit from vaccines that were made in this way, which they view as immoral (as do many other people of faith). The school district is not offering religious exemptions to the mandate – only medical exemptions (as well as many other exceptions for preferred categories of students).

So our client had to make the following decision: either get vaccinated and violate her faith, or refuse the vaccine, sign up for distance learning, and drop out of sports (losing the shot at a college sports scholarship). Unvaccinated students with a medical exemption, however, can still show up in person and play sports. It’s sort of like “separate but equal” for students with disfavored religious beliefs. And teachers (but not students) can get religious exemptions and show up in person. Meanwhile CA’s statewide K-12 Covid vaccine mandate (first of its kind in the nation) will offer personal belief exemptions for the time being. We filed a lawsuit against the school district to address this obviously unconstitutional framework.

Last Thursday, 11/18, the day before the hearing on our request for an emergency injunction, the district court judge denied the motion and took our hearing off calendar. The ruling is flawed in many respects, and we believe it will be summarily reversed in short order. We filed an emergency appeal with the Ninth Circuit yesterday, asking for relief before 11/29– our client’s deadline to get the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. We heard today that the Ninth Circuit set a briefing schedule that makes clear they intend to rule before 11/29. Please pray that our panel understands and appreciates the significant constitutional issues at stake in this important case.

The above comes from a Nov. 20 posting on Facebook by Paul Jonna, an attorney in the case.