A lawsuit filed against Los Angeles County and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD) is poised to determine whether vaccination status is Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)-protected or not, according to a local attorney.
“The question is, is your vaccination status considered personal health information under HIPAA,” said Los Angeles attorney Kevin McBride. “Your medical records, all that information, obviously that comes under HIPAA but does the fact that you're vaccinated or not fall under HIPAA protections? And that's not been decided or ruled on yet. Frankly, this case will be good for that purpose.”
The complaint, filed by the Los Angeles Sheriffs' Professional Association in the Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of 1,850 workers, challenges a requirement that members of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) inform a genetics laboratory of their COVID-19 vaccination status or face possible discipline.
Sheriff Alex Villanueva is named as a defendant in the complaint filed last month.
“What's at stake is the use of their vaccination status and how that vaccine status is shared or not shared,” McBride told the Southern California Record.
The plaintiffs allege that it is a violation of the penal and vehicle codes to require them to reveal their vaccination status to Fulgent Genetics, according to media reports.
“There's apparently a war over genetic information going on and a global corporate contest,” McBride added. “Apparently, the Chinese government is very active in trying to accumulate genetic data for whatever purpose and the big concern is Fulgent being a Chinese-backed company or one that has a lot of Chinese nationals that run it. People make that leap of association to say the Fulgent data will be used in a nefarious way to benefit the Chinese government.”
McBride is embroiled in his own lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles, which he filed on Sept. 17 in Los Angeles County Superior Court on behalf of the nonprofit Firefighters4Freedom Foundation and 529 individual Los Angeles city firefighters. He is challenging an order by the city council that requires city employees to be fully vaccinated by Dec. 8.