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This week’s newsletter discusses lawsuits related to COVID-19 workplace safety, a Supreme Court case that may impact the ability of states to regulate public health issues, and an update on health equity litigation. You can find our archive newsletters here.
COVID-19 Workplace Safety
In Troogstad v. City of Chicago (U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Docket No. 1:21-cv-05600. U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Docket No. 25-1575; U.S. Supreme Court, Docket No. 25-1400), more than 130 City employees challenged Chicago’s COVID-19 vaccination policy, which required employees to be vaccinated or obtain a medical or religious accommodation. The employees, many of whom worked for the City’s fire and water departments, argued that the policy violated their constitutional rights to bodily autonomy and religious freedom under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and the Illinois Religious Freedom Restoration Act (IRFR). They also challenged the City’s religious accommodation process, which required applicants to obtain a religious leader’s signature and explain how their beliefs prevented them from receiving the vaccine. The District Court, Seventh Circuit, and United States Supreme Court all rejected plaintiffs’ claims.
The employees initially sought an injunction to block the policy while their lawsuit proceeded. In 2022, the Seventh Circuit affirmed the denial of that request, finding that the employees were unlikely to succeed on their constitutional claims. Following the district court’s dismissal of their amended complaint, plaintiffs appealed, and the Seventh Circuit affirmed the lower court’s decision again in December 2025. The court concluded that the employees had not adequately connected their religious beliefs to their opposition to vaccination under IRFR and that existing precedent foreclosed their substantive due process claims.
The employees subsequently petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case, arguing that Chicago’s vaccination requirement violated their constitutional right to bodily autonomy and to refuse unwanted medical treatment. The petitioners argued that existing Supreme Court precedent protects these rights and that lower courts have given governments too much authority to impose vaccination requirements in the name of public health. They urged the Court to clarify the scope of these constitutional protections and the limits of government authority to require vaccination as a condition of employment.
On October 5, 2026, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Troogstad (Docket No. 25-1400), leaving the Seventh Circuit’s ruling in place.
In Schmidt v. City of Pasadena (U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Docket No. 2:21-cv-08769; U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Docket No. 25-488), a Pasadena police forensic specialist challenged the City’s COVID-19 workplace safety policy. Adopted in August 2021 during the spread of the Delta variant, the policy required employees to be vaccinated or obtain a medical or religious exemption. Employees receiving exemptions were required to undergo weekly COVID-19 testing and wear masks in shared spaces. Schmidt received a religious exemption but was placed on unpaid leave after refusing to comply with the testing and masking requirements. He later complied and returned to work, but claimed the requirements exposed his unvaccinated status, created a hostile work environment, and caused physical, emotional, and property-related harms.
On October 5, 2026, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the District Court’s dismissal of Schmidt’s lawsuit, ruling that Pasadena and the City officials were immune from liability under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act. The PREP Act, enacted in 2005, protects certain individuals and entities from lawsuits arising from the administration of medical countermeasures during a declared public health emergency.
The Ninth Circuit found that Pasadena and the individual officials qualified for immunity because they developed and implemented the City’s workplace safety policy. The Court also rejected Schmidt’s arguments that the COVID-19 tests and masks were ineffective or lacked the necessary federal authorization, finding that both qualified as protected medical countermeasures under the PREP Act.
The court further clarified that PREP Act immunity depends on whether the alleged injuries resulted from the use of covered medical countermeasures, rather than the type of legal claims brought by the plaintiff. Because Schmidt’s alleged physical, emotional, and property-related harms arose from the City’s testing and masking requirements, the court concluded that all his claims were covered by the Act. Thus, the plaintiffs' claims were dismissed.
State Regulation of Public Health
In Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County (U.S. Supreme Court, Docket No. 25-170), which we recently covered in a blog post published in Harvard Law School’s Bill of Health, had oral arguments in front of the Supreme Court on October 5. Suncor deals with a protracted legal battle between Boulder County, Colorado and several prominent energy companies over the health and environmental impacts of the fossil fuel industry and Boulder’s efforts to seek damages related to those impacts. The primary question in front of the Supreme Court is whether federal law, specifically the Clean Air Act, preempts Colorado environmental law. The argument from the fossil fuel companies would, if accepted by the court, continue the ongoing pattern of weakening the ability of state and local governments to safeguard public health.
Update on Health Equity Litigation
Do No Harm et al v. DRDINAMD LLC et al (U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, Docket No. 1:26-CV-04152) was filed on May 19, 2026, by Do No Harm — the nonprofit legal organization that seeks to protect “healthcare from the disastrous consequences of identity politics” — against the operator of FindABlackDoctor.com, a website designed to help patients across the United States connect with Black doctors in their area.
Do No Harm has filed numerous similar lawsuits over the last few years including in 2025 against The University of Pennsylvania Health System. We covered the lawsuit in our March 28, 2025 newsletter, as well as in an article in the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics in June 2026 which covered the eventual ruling in the case (the defendants offered to change the name of the directory and open it to all doctors who demonstrate a commitment to underserved communities regardless of race).
In the current case, Do No Harm is once again arguing that the directory maintained by FindaBlackDoctor.com illegally discriminates based on the race of doctors, denying all applications from non-black doctors. Unlike the University of Pennsylvania case, which made claims based on Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1967 and the Affordable Care Act, the claim in this lawsuit is related primarily to the “contract” function of FindABlackDoctor.com and argues that the plaintiff doctor suffers harm from the loss of a contractual opportunity through the denial of their application to the directory. Plaintiffs further allege that the website promotes “harmful, offensive, and racist stereotypes” around the importance and impact of diversity in improving health outcomes among minority communities. Plaintiffs make this claim despite research showing higher satisfaction, trust, and clinical outcomes with patient-doctor race concordance. Of note, the only question on the FindABlackDoctor application which implicates race is about whether the practice is “black owned.”
A motion to dismiss was filed by the defendants on August 31 with a motion in opposition filed by the plaintiffs on September 28.
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