A California appeals court ruled against the San Diego Unified School District by affirming school districts lack the authority to impose student COVID vaccine mandates, the Daily Wire reports. The 4th District Court of Appeal agreed with a lower court’s ruling, which determined that only state lawmakers could require a vaccine for in-person school attendance leaving “no room for each of the over 1,000 individual school districts to impose a patchwork of additional vaccine mandates.”
District officials adopted a “Vaccination Roadmap” in September 2021 that would have required a COVID vaccine for students 16 or older to attend in-person classes, enroll in sports, and engage in other extracurricular activities. However, the anti-mandate group Let Them Choose posed a legal challenge to the district in October 2021.
The court called the district’s so-called roadmap a strained argument that does not actually mandate students to be vaccinated against COVID but “rather gives them a choice to either do so or be enrolled in independent study,” adding the choice resembles “the school cafeteria offering a choice between Brussels sprouts or broccoli.”
what is the status of mandates in universities?