Case updates this week:

Tuesday April 16th: The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of a challenge to a prison’s masking mandate during the COVID-19 pandemic in DeGroot v. Wisconsin Department of Corrections. The plaintiff, a prisoner in a Wisconsin state prison in 2020, claimed that the prison’s mask mandate violated religious freedoms under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). The RLUIPA requires that any prison policy that substantially burdens a prisoner’s sincere religious belief must be the least restrictive means of achieving a compelling state interest. However, the lower court held, and the Seventh Circuit affirmed, that the case was moot because the RLUIPA only allows for injunctive relief, and the mask mandate had been rescinded in 2022. Further, the plaintiff’s complaint did not fit without the exception for conduct the defendants were likely to resume because “the now-rescinded mandate … responded to a version of the pandemic that is no longer around.”

Tuesday April 16th: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss two claims and stay one other in a California church’s challenge to the state’s COVID-19 era policies. In Calvary Chapel San Jose v. County of Santa Clara, the plaintiffs, a church in San Jose, California and its pastor, are challenging several public health orders issued by California and Santa Clara County on constitutional grounds. However, the lower court dismissed claims that requested injunctions and declaratory judgments against the County to allow the County’s enforcement action to proceed. The court stayed the Court’s claim for money damages until the state’s enforcement action against Calvary has finished. The lower court also dismissed Calvary’s First Amendment retaliation claim because the allegedly retaliatory conduct, informing the Church’s lender of the enforcement lawsuit, was part of the state’s enforcement action, and therefore had First Amendment protection under the Noerr-Pennington doctrine. The Ninth Circuit dismissed Calvary’s appeal of the dismissal of the retaliation claim because there has not yet been a final decision in the case and appellate jurisdiction did not yet exist.

Tuesday April 16th: The federal district court for the Northern District of Texas dismissed yet another challenge to the federal government’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal employees in Arzamendi v. Austin. The plaintiffs, civilian Department of Defense employees with sincere religious objections to vaccination, alleged that the federal government’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate caused them emotional and psychological harm because their requests for religious exemption to the vaccine mandate were not adjudicated quickly. However, the court dismissed the claims related to vaccination as moot because plaintiffs filed suit before their requests for exemption were denied. In the meantime, the vaccine mandate was rescinded. The court also dismissed the plaintiffs challenge to the masking and testing alternative to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate because the plaintiffs did not adequately plead religious objections to masking and testing, instead only focusing on vaccination.