Case updates this week:

Monday January 29th: The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of a challenge to an Illinois COVID-19 vaccine mandate for schoolteachers in Svendsen v. Pritzker. The plaintiffs argued that the COVID-19 vaccine requirement for employees of primary and secondary schools violated their First Amendment rights, Title VII, as well as various claims based on Illinois state laws. However, the Seventh Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision to dismiss the damages claims Plaintiffs brought in federal court because they were precluded by a final decision on the merits in state court. Plaintiffs had attempted to split their equitable claims in state proceedings from the damages claims in federal court, a move that was prohibited under Illinois law. The Seventh Circuit held that because the state court had already rendered a final decision, the federal damage claims were precluded under Illinois’s application of res judicata.

Monday January 29th: The federal district court for the Northern District of California certified the class of plaintiffs that allege Santa Clara County’s implementation of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for employees violated their religious freedoms. In UnifySCC v. Cody the plaintiffs are challenging the county’s policy of disallowing exempted individuals from remaining in jobs the county categorized as high-risk, regardless of whether the exemption was medical or religious, and despite the county’s accommodation framework for transferring them to lower risk jobs. The plaintiffs argue that their Free Exercise rights under the First Amendment as well as their Equal Protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment were violated because the reassignment process prioritized those with medical exemptions. The court found that the proposed class met the certification requirements on the question of the county’s liability, but not on the question of individual damages. Of note, the class counsel was certified as Advocates for Faith & Freedom, an anti-vaccine religious liberty advocacy group previously covered in this newsletter.