The 9th Circuit Defends Medical Freedom

boo hoo, news media explains

The 9th Circuit just conspiracy theoried. They disinformationed! Which means, of course, that a panel of judges did something tremendously useful and wise, and the usual suspects are soiling their adult diapers over it.

I wrote last year — at that link, scroll down to the second item — about a lawsuit filed by the Health Freedom Defense Fund against the Los Angeles Unified School District over its Covid-19 vaccine mandate for employment. That mandate led the district to fire hundreds of school employees. Late last summer, a panel of federal appellate court judges expressed tremendous skepticism about the mandate, signaling an adverse ruling that would create case law and limit future mandates. Racing to beat the ruling, the LAUSD dropped the mandate, telling the court that the lawsuit had been mooted and asking for dismissal.

Obey her!

Almost nine months later, the other shoe has dropped. In a June 7 ruling, the panel of 9th Circuit judges declined to regard the lawsuit as moot, and opined on the merits. I have no interest in the procedural twists and turns, but the lawyer Jeff Childers covers those in detail (again, scroll down to the second item) at the Substack page Coffee & Covid.

The merits interest me a great deal, and you can read the several opinions in the case here. A District Court judge had dismissed the lawsuit, citing the Supreme Court’s 1905 decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts — which concluded that vaccine mandates are a constitutionally valid exercise of state authority: “Upon the principle of self-defense, of paramount necessity, a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members.”

The 9th Circuit panel noted that Jacobson is about protecting communities — that is, about limiting the spread of disease through the use of vaccines, medical products that prevent infection and transmission. And the appellate court judges concluded that the LAUSD hasn’t proved that the Covid-19 “vaccines” do that: “LAUSD implies that it is for preventing transmission of COVID-19 but does not adduce judicially noticeable facts that prove this.” They’ve sent the case back to the trial court for fact-finding on that question. The lawsuit lives.

In other words, the 9th Circuit has questioned, in a published opinion, whether the mRNA “vaccines” for Covid-19 are actually vaccines, and has said explicitly that the claim that the injections are vaccines — that they stop transmission and infection — has to be proved in order for a mandate to be constitutionally permissible.

If you don’t read all of the opinions, at least take a moment for the short concurring opinion from Judge Daniel Collins. On page 25, he cites case law that describes “the common-law rule that forced medication was a battery, and the long legal tradition protecting the decision to refuse unwanted medical treatment.”

Forced medication is battery, “an unlawful application of force directly or indirectly upon another person or their personal belongings, causing bodily injury or offensive contact.” A mandate for a “vaccine” that doesn’t stop transmission and infection is an unlawful application of force. It’s an act of violence. Personal video below for Judge Daniel Collins, expressing the current sentiment of the Tell Me How This Ends community:

The news website CalMatters fact checks the claim that the Covid-19 vaccines don’t stop infection or transmission by quoting the CDC: “COVID-19 vaccines are effective at protecting people from getting seriously ill, being hospitalized, and dying.” Note the two necessary claims that are missing from that sentence. The rest of it is also bullshit, but whatever.

Now, here’s the stupid headline for that CalMatters story: “Trump-appointed judges revive lawsuit against L.A. schools’ COVID vaccine mandate.” The lawsuit is revived because of ORANGE MAN, you see.

And then CalMatters drops a disapproving quote from “Lindsay Wiley, a law professor at UCLA and director of the school’s Health Law and Policy Program,” who frets that the court’s analysis “is surprising and, I think, misguided.” They appear to have forgotten to quote the part where she performs any kind of legal analysis on the claim that the ruling is misguided, but they do come up with a conclusion about the dark consequences: “The ruling could have a ‘chilling effect’ on government attempts to require vaccines in the future, Wiley said.”

A ruling against governmental medical coercion in the recent past is very bad because it could limit governmental medical coercion in the future, expert says. It is very important to be an expert.

For more on the ruling, see this thread from the Los Angeles lawyer Julie Hamill.

In a moment when it seems like very few institutions are working at all, a court has shown important signs of life. Years of madness are waning. We’re headed into years of new and even dumber madness, but still.

I’ll have limited Internet access, off and on, for the next few days, so it’ll probably take me a while to respond to emails and comments.