A female student in California who filed a lawsuit against the San Diego Unified School District over its COVID vaccine mandate sought the intervention of the Supreme Court on Friday on her behalf.
The student at Scripps Ranch High School appealed to the Supreme Court to prevent the San Diego school district from enforcing the COVID vaccine mandate on her due to her religious beliefs. According to the Los Angeles Times, Justice Elena Kagan ordered the San Diego Unified School District to respond to the student's request by this Thursday at 3 p.m.
The California student filed a lawsuit against the San Diego school district after its school board approved a COVID vaccine mandate for all staff and faculty members and students in the district back in September. The COVID vaccine mandate requires all students to have their second COVID vaccine dose by December 20, or else they will be prohibited from attending in-person classes or participating in extracurricular activities beginning January 24.
The student from Scripps Ranch High School, who is described as Jane Doe in court documents, filed a lawsuit against the San Diego school district because it did not allow for religious exemptions in its COVID vaccine mandate for students. She argued that the district is discriminating against her based on her sincerely held Christian beliefs, which prevents her from being inoculated with the COVID vaccines.
The LATimes said the vaccines were developed from stem cell lines that were taken from aborted babies many decades ago, and added that the current COVID vaccines do not include any cells from aborted fetuses. Recent reports, however, indicated that the current COVID vaccines were made using fetal cell lines derived from "carefully planned" abortions.
Project Veritas also released a video featuring a Pfizer whistleblower who claimed that the company is doing its best to hide any information on their use of fetal cells to develop the COVID vaccines.
The San Diego Unified School District is not offering religious exemptions to students but is offering medical exemptions on a case-by-case basis, which according to the district is aligned with state rules on COVID vaccine mandates. Vaccine deferrals are allowed by the school district, but only for a small portion of students, which include homeless students and those in military and foster families. The reason behind these deferrals is because of "potential issues with immediately securing records" for such students.
The San Diego Unified School District admitted that they are not offering religious exemptions from their COVID vaccine mandate because according to the report, "families could abuse that loophole, resulting in many people not getting vaccinated." Faculty and staff, however, are allowed to request for religious exemptions as federal law allowed such requests.
"The San Diego Unified School District seems to believe that medical reasons, secular status, concerns about FDA approval, administrative convenience, and accommodation of adult consciences are important enough to justify allowing unvaccinated individuals to come to school," Jeffrey Trissell, who is one attorney representing the female California student, said in a statement. "Yet a student with sincere religious beliefs is treated harshly and banned from in-person class and athletics. That discriminatory treatment triggers strict scrutiny under the free exercise clause."
According to Politico, the California student and her parents wrote in their petition to the Supreme Court on Friday, "The District has conditioned irreplaceable benefits and privileges on the surrender of First Amendment rights."
Meanwhile, California's Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom instructed the nearby Los Angeles Unified School District to adjust its vaccine mandate to avoid 34,000 students who may not be able to meet the January vaccination deadline, Cal Matters reported. He suggested that they needed to "fine-tune" the COVID vaccine mandate. The interim LAUSD superintendent already proposed to delay the mandate to the next school year in Fall 2022.
