Case updates this week:

Wednesday February 14th: The federal district court for the Northern District of Texas refused to dismiss as moot a case surrounding the US Navy’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate in US Navy Seals 1-26 v. Austin. The court held that the injunctive relief initially sought by the plaintiffs to void the COVID-19 vaccine mandate should be dismissed as moot. However, despite acknowledging the almost universal agreement among courts to the contrary, the court ruled that the plaintiffs’ claims that the Navy’s religious accommodations policy as a whole violated their religious liberty were not moot. The plaintiffs had alleged that the Navy’s procedure for considering requests for religious exemptions was faulty even prior to the adoption of the COVID-19 mandate. Because this allegedly faulty procedure was present before the COVID-19 mandate and is still in effect, the court held that the plaintiffs presented enough evidence of both past harm and potential future harm to defeat the motion to dismiss.

Thursday February 15th: The Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s dismissal of a challenge to Rutgers University’s COVID-19 vaccination policy for on-campus students. The plaintiffs included both Rutgers students and noted anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense. They argued in Children’s Health Defense v. Rutgers that the university’s policy was preempted by the federal Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), and that it violated their Due Process and Equal Protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. In dismissing the preemption claim, the court held that the EUA statute only protects individuals from being required to receive EUA products, not from the consequences of refusing to receive them. In upholding the dismissal of the Due Process claim, the court, relying on Jacobson stated that there is no fundamental right to refuse vaccination. The court thus applied rational basis review and held that Rutgers’s policy was rationally linked to limiting the spread of COVID-19. Finally, the court found that the plaintiffs had not sufficiently alleged facts to support their Equal Protection claims that they received unequal treatment vis-à-vis faculty and staff on the one hand, and students with “natural immunity” on the other. In any event, because students are more likely to live in communal settings than faculty and staff, and because the CDC had determined vaccinated and “naturally immune” individuals presented different infection risks, the plaintiffs were not similarly situated to either of the classes they claimed received preferential treatment.