Current, Former City of LA Employees Sue Over Vaccine Mandate

LOS ANGELES, CA — Dozens of current and former city of Los Angeles workers are seeking damages in a lawsuit alleging that the FDA's emergency use authorization for COVID-19 vaccines allows individuals to refuse the shot without facing penalties from employers, according to court papers obtained Tuesday.

The suit, brought on behalf of 56 plaintiffs, names the city, Mayor Karen Bass and former Mayor Eric Garcetti as defendants, alleging the city's vaccine mandate for workers violated city employees' constitutional rights to privacy and due process.

The ordinance passed by the City Council two years ago required COVID- 19 vaccinations for all city employees except those who had medical or religious exemptions.

The lawsuit, filed Friday in Los Angeles federal court, claims that at the time of the vaccine rollout, the shots were unapproved medical products allowed under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Emergency Use Authorization -- EUA -- in order to combat the pandemic.

The suit seeks damages for the alleged deprivation of the right to refuse "an EUA investigational drug without incurring a penalty or loss of benefits to which plaintiffs were otherwise entitled."

The plaintiffs contend that refusal to be vaccinated "led to severe financial, emotional, and other damages," according to the lawsuit.

A City Attorney's Office spokesman said the office does not comment on pending litigation.

The complaint contends that "even though defendants' mandates were instituted during and in response to a pandemic emergency, as the U.S. Supreme Court noted since the beginning of the pandemic: `even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten."'

The ordinance required plaintiffs "to inject certain drugs, biologics, and devices into their bodies as a condition to continue employment with the city of Los Angeles," according to the suit.

The mandated drugs were under EUA and other authority, "none of which can ever come under mandatory conditions," the lawsuit alleges.

"With anything that is considered emergency use application, you have the right to refuse," said attorney Jennifer W. Kennedy, who filed the suit. "At the time the shots were rolled out, every single one of the vaccines was under EUA authority. They never got FDA approval."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said vaccines approved under EUA are "safe" and "effective."

City News Service