A group of nonprofits has filed a lawsuit against Loyola Marymount University (LMU) in federal court challenging the college’s vaccine, testing, masking, and social distancing mandates on behalf of two undergraduate students.
“We're also tackling detrimental reliance where these kids have signed housing agreements, paid housing department deposits and entered into legally binding agreements with the school and then the school unilaterally, with zero notice, completely changes the terms and conditions of these agreements,” said California Chapter of Children’s Health Defense (CHD-CA) Nicole Pearson, who is among the attorneys representing the plaintiffs. “Some of these terms and conditions are physically impossible to comply with.”
Pearson joined Tyler & Bursch, and Advocates for Faith & Freedom in filing the complaint in the Central District of California alleging that LMU's accommodations for exempted, unvaccinated students resemble apartheid with the unvaccinated living in separate dorms, wearing face coverings, social distancing, submitting to surveillance testing, and having their bodily and medical privacy invaded while their vaccinated peers move freely about campus without any special conditions or requirements.
“Vaccinated or unvaccinated is not a protected class of individuals but there are individuals here who have disabilities or medical conditions that are being treated unfairly as a result of that medical condition or disability because they are not vaccinated,” Pearson told the Southern California Record.
The lawsuit further complains that the unvaccinated are required to assume all risk for any COVID-related cases or injuries that occur while on campus.
Pearson argues that university officials are misguided in targeting unvaccinated students who are exempted from immunization due to a medical condition or disability.
“If LMU’s true goal is to protect the students and prevent this transmission of COVID-19, then we now know that fully vaccinated individuals can not only contract COVID-19 but they can actually transmit it with the same viral loads as an unvaccinated person,” Pearson said.
“So, truly this policy does not achieve the purported goal of preventing transmission and keeping people safe. It’s our position that this policy makes the campus more dangerous because now we have kids, faculty, and staff that are fully vaccinated who are unaware that they have contracted because the COVID-19 vaccines minimize symptoms.”
If a federal appeals court decision earlier this week is any indication, LMU students may face an uphill battle.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld U.S. District Judge Damon Leichty’s decision that rejected Indiana University students’ argument that college immunization mandates are unwanted medical treatments that violate their constitutional rights and decided instead that it is reasonable to require them to be vaccinated, according to media reports.
“Indiana is a different state so they have different standards and that was an Indiana federal court,” Pearson added. “We have different precedents that will be governing this case. Our case is completely different.”