Western University Drops ALL Vaccine Mandates
By Igor Chudov | November 29, 2022
Remember the scandal with Western University in Ontario, Canada, that was requiring boosters from its students?
That’s the college that required bivalent boosters for fall classes.
The uproar was momentous. How can a college require completely unproven “boosters” to be taken by young, healthy students who had one or more Covids anyway?
The college finally relented and fully discontinued Covid vaccination requirements:
Note the BLUE highlighting of “medical experts” in both above images. In three months, the brilliant “medical experts” have completed a 180-degree turnaround in their deep evidence-based scientific thinking and no longer demand the boosters.
What made them change their minds?
I am sure it is you, the protesters, the public, substack authors, etc.
The experts are possibly starting to worry that their role in the “pandemic” will soon be subject to pointed questions from the disappointed public worried about health and fertility.
Personally, I will do my best to continue exposing Covid criminals so that they are not let off the hook and their crimes are not forgotten.
January 6 Was Not a Seditious Conspiracy
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | December 1, 2022
It’s a shame that a course in logic is not offered in law school. If it was, maybe, just maybe, attorney Harry Litman would not have written an op-ed entitled “A Jury Delivers the Truth about Jan. 6. It Was Seditious Conspiracy,” which appeared in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times.
In his article, Litman, a former U.S. attorney and deputy attorney general, claims that the recent federal conviction of Oath Keepers leaders Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs for seditious conspiracy “will go a long way toward defining the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol melee, once and for all, as a heinous crime orchestrated by enemies of democracy.”
Well, actually, it does no such thing. My hunch is that Litman’s prosecutorial mindset is clouding his thinking.
The jury’s verdict of seditious conspiracy applies only to Rhodes and Meggs, not to anyone else. In fact, in the same trial the jury acquitted other defendants of seditious conspiracy and instead convicted them of the lesser charge of obstructing a government proceeding.
Simply because two people are convicted of seditious conspiracy doesn’t mean that the thousands of other people involved in the Capitol protests are also guilty of seditious conspiracy. The convictions apply only to the people who are convicted, not to the thousands of other people who aren’t convicted.
In other words, you can have a situation where thousands of people have no intention whatsoever of committing seditious conspiracy and who are simply protesting some governmental action. At the same time and in that same situation, you can have two people who are conspiring to commit sedition.
Under the law, the fact that those two people are conspiring to commit sedition does not convert the thousands of other people into people who are also conspiring to commit sedition. If the law permitted the feds to convict innocent people in that manner, then everyone involved in the January 6 protests would have been charged with seditious conspiracy and convicted. The fact that federal prosecutors did not charge most of the protestors with seditious conspiracy and the fact that the jury acquitted some of the defendants in the recent sedition case of seditious conspiracy demonstrate the legal principle that only those who are guilty of a crime should be prosecuted and convicted of the crime.
Litman also reveals his deeply set prosecutorial mindset by suggesting that other people who are still facing trial for the January 6 event “may want to think hard about pleading guilty and offering to cooperate with the government investigation.’
Really? But what if they’re innocent, Litman? Do you still think they should think hard about pleading guilty? As a criminal-defense attorney, would you permit a client in the January 6 event to plead guilty knowing that he was claiming to be innocent? Or are you saying that your client would automatically be guilty, regardless of what he claimed, simply because Rhodes and Meggs were convicted of seditious conspiracy?
Moreover, what’s wrong with going to trial? Isn’t that a person’s right? Well, not exactly. Litman knows that it is long-established policy in the federal courts to hit people who go to trial and are convicted with higher sentences than those who simply plead guilty. In other words, in the federal court system, you have a right to a jury trial but if you exercise it and lose, you are going to receive a double penalty for making those federal judges and federal prosecutors work for their generous tax-funded salaries.
The fact that two people are convicted of seditious conspiracy does not mean that everyone else involved in the January 6 protests is guilty of seditious conspiracy or, for that matter, any other crime. Moreover, people who are claiming to be innocent should never be encouraged or permitted to plead guilty. Everyone has the right of trial by jury and should never be punished for exercising that right.
Doctors who are accused of spreading “misleading information” could be jailed under new British Columbia law
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | November 29, 2022
During the pandemic, several doctors in the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) hit the headlines for opposing Covid measures. State-sanctioned medical authorities responded by warning physicians that if they “put the public at risk with misinformation,” they may face investigations and regulatory action. Now, just 18 months later, these threats from medical authorities have evolved into a sweeping piece of legislation that includes two-year jail sentences for doctors who are deemed to be spreading certain types of “false or misleading information.”
The new legislation, Bill 36 — Health Professions and Occupations Act (HPOA), was approved by the legislature last Thursday and immediately received Royal Assent. A Cabinet order will determine when it comes into force.
According to the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that defends the freedoms of Canadians, the bill will permit BC’s Health Minister to appoint College Boards who have the power to enforce many of the bill’s provisions. The bill also gives the Health Minister powers to enforce some provisions.
These combined powers can be used to jail, fine, and suspend doctors who are deemed to have spread certain types of “false or misleading information to patients or the public” and force doctors to get vaccinated as a condition of being eligible to practice. These powers are outlined in sections 259, 514, 518, 506, 511, and 200.
You can see the full text of Bill 36 here.
Powers to suspend and impose limits on health practitioners
Section 259 (“Summary protection orders”) states that health practitioners can be suspended or have limits imposed on their practice authority if they provide “false or misleading information to patients or the public” and it’s deemed that “a person who acts on the information is significant risk of harm” or providing the information is deemed to be a “health hazard” under the Public Health Act.
The Public Health Act classifies any activity that “is likely to interfere, with the suppression of infectious agents or hazardous agents” as a health hazard. This definition is broad and could easily be applied to criticism of vaccines, masks, lockdowns, thermal surveillance, lateral flow tests, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, antibody tests, and any other measures that authorities claim are necessary to stop the spread of Covid or another infectious disease.
Bill 36 also doesn’t define “false or misleading information” which raises the possibility that doctors could be suspended for sharing something that challenges the current narrative and later turns out to be true.
During the pandemic, multiple statements that were branded false later turned out to be true, such as those related to vaccines. Initially, high-ranking public health officials praised the purported 90% Covid-19 vaccine efficacy rate and said the vaccine will protect against the delta variant. Big Tech platforms made questioning the effectiveness of the vaccine a bannable offense. Yet this year, high-ranking health officials have reversed their stance and admitted that they “knew” Covid-19 vaccines wouldn’t prevent infection.
Powers to jail and fine health practitioners
Section 514 (“Offences”) and Section 518 (“Penalties”) permit fines of up $200,000 per individual or $500,000 per company and prison terms of up to two years for those that “knowingly” disclose information that contravenes a provision of Bill 36.
This seemingly suggests that someone who “knowingly” violate’s Bill 36’s rules on false or misleading information can be jailed or fined.
Just like the term “false or misleading information,” the term “knowingly” isn’t defined in Bill 36 and there’s no methodology or test in the bill that describes how courts will determine whether someone knowingly violated the rules.
Powers to perform warrantless search and seizures
Section 506 (“Search and seizure order”) permits judges to authorize a person to search and seize items from a health practitioners’ premises on the pre-crime-esque premise that the target will “likely contravene” a provision of Bill 36.
And section 511 (“Warrantless search”) allows those petitioning the judge for a search and seizure order to perform warrantless searches if they deem there to be “grounds for a search and seizure order” and “the delay necessary to obtain the order would result in the loss or destruction of evidence.” Those performing warrantless searches are also allowed to prevent the lawful owner of the premises from entering and seize items if they deem there to be “reasonable grounds” for it.
This seemingly means that if a health practitioner is deemed to be “likely” to break the bill’s false or misleading information rules or “likely” to push back against the bill’s mandatory vaccine provisions, even when they haven’t actually done any of these things, they could have their premises searched and items seized without a warrant if the person performing the search decides that there are grounds and that evidence could be destroyed.
Powers to force health practitioners to get vaccinated
Section 200 (“Eligibility to practise”) allows the Health Minister to introduce regulations that make being “vaccinated against specified transmissible illnesses” a condition of eligibility to practice. This means that doctors could be forced to get the Covid vaccine and any other vaccines specified by the Health Minister in order to continue practicing.
“An end run around democratic checks and balances”
Bill 36 has been blasted by legal groups and political parties.
“The legislation represents an end run around democratic checks and balances,” the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms wrote in a statement on Bill 36.
BC lawyer Charlene Le Beau added: “The enactment of Bill 36 would evidence a further erosion of the rights and freedoms our Charter is supposed to protect, particularly individual liberty. As Aristotle posited, ‘The basis of a democratic state is liberty.’”
David Leis, the vice president of engagement and development at the public policy think tank the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, called the bill “a full-frontal assault on the professional integrity and freedom of the health-care professions” and said the bill is “entirely inappropriate.”
Tensions grow between Apple’s censorship practices and Elon Musk’s Twitter
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | November 29, 2022
Elon Musk has claimed that Apple has threatened to “withhold” Twitter from the App Store without giving a reason.
“Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why,” Musk tweeted on Monday.
The announcement came after Musk said that the iPhone maker had “mostly stopped advertising” on Twitter. He also posted a poll asking users if Apple should “publish all censorship actions it has taken that affect its customers.”
Apple is yet to respond to Musk’s claim. It is unclear what “withhold” means. In most cases, it could mean refusing updates to the app or even removing the app from the App Store completely until Twitter obeys its demands.
There have been various clues about Musk’s growing annoyance at Apple’s monopolistic practices. The Twitter owner criticized the App Store’s in-app purchases fee, calling it a “hidden 30% tax.”
Musk has said he is going to loosen the platform’s content censorship guidelines, and has already begun reinstating banned accounts.
College Graduates Are the New Favored Class of Democratic Largesse
By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | November 28, 2022
When Americans make lists of the persecuted, downtrodden groups in our society, college graduates rarely top the ranking. But President Joe Biden is offering one bribe after another to convert college graduates into perpetual dependents of the Democratic Party. Biden’s handouts helped prevent a “red wave” of Republican victories on Election Day and he appears hellbent on forcing taxpayers to pay any price to continue buying votes for his party.
Federal subsidies for higher education have been one of the least recognized boondoggles of recent decades. Federal-backed loans for higher education took off in the 1960s and have skyrocketed in this century. Almost $2 trillion in federal student loans are owed by 46 million people.
Federal aid spurred tuition increases that make it far more difficult for unsubsidized students to afford higher education. A student’s financial “need” is defined largely by tuition fees. Every tuition increase means an increase in federal aid for students—and thus an increase in the federal aid for the college. A 2012 study by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity concluded that financial aid “inevitably puts upward pressure on tuition. Higher tuition reduces college affordability, leading to calls for more financial aid, setting the vicious cycle in motion all over again.” A 2015 Federal Reserve analysis “found that for every new dollar made available in federally subsidized student loans, schools…rose their rates by 65 cents.”
Federal policies have helped turn young people into a debtor class perpetually clamoring for relief from its burdens. Rather than seeing the federal government as a potential peril to their rights and liberties, some debt-burdened young adults view it as the “Great Liberator”—presuming the right candidate is elected.
Rather than ending the perverse incentives embedded in federal aid, Biden “solved” the problem by canceling borrowers’ obligation to repay their subsidized loans. On August 24, Biden invoked an obscure provision of the post-9/11 Heroes Act to justify hundreds of billions of dollars of handouts to people who had taken out federal college loans. The Heroes Act permits the Education Department “to waive or modify student loan payments in times of national emergency.” Individuals earning less than $125,000 could have up to $20,000 in federal debt automatically erased; couples earning $250,000 could see a $40,000 forgiveness windfall.
Biden had previously admitted that the law would not justify blanket forgiveness of college loans, but he and his advisors decided to force Americans to pay any price for Democrat votes in the midterm congressional elections. The Department of Education justified Biden’s decree as “a program of categorical debt cancellation directed at addressing the financial harms caused by the COVID-19 pandemic,” including “cancellation for borrowers who have been financially harmed because of the COVID- 19 pandemic.” But college graduates were doing much better financially than other Americans who get stuck with the bill for their schooling. Their unemployment rate was less than two percent at that time.
Former Education Department lawyer Hans Bader estimates that the total cost of Biden’s student loan write-offs could exceed a trillion dollars. A Wall Street Journal editorial headlined “Biden’s Half-Trillion-Dollar Student-Loan Forgiveness Coup” derided his decision as “easily the worst domestic decision of his Presidency.” The Journal pointed out that Biden based the loan cancellation for more than 40 million borrowers “on no authority but his own” power as president. “This is a college graduate bailout paid for by plumbers and FedEx drivers,” the Journal noted. As former OMB director David Stockman observed, “Student debt is overwhelmingly an investment in professional credentialization that should never have been an obligation of the taxpayers in the first place.” ZeroHedge quipped on Twitter: “Have colleges raised tuition by $10,000 yet or are they waiting a few days first?”
There was no rationale for blanket cancellation of student debts that would not justify blanket cancellation of almost any debt citizens owed to the government. At the same time that Biden played Santa Claus with student loan forgiveness, his administration was hiring 87,000 new IRS agents and employees to squeeze more money out of working Americans.
The handouts helped buy Democrats their biggest boost among voters — a 28% advantage over Republicans in voters age 18 to 29 in the mid-term elections. Two days after the election, Biden tweeted, “I want to thank the young people of this nation” who voted for “student debt relief.” Jon Cooper, a former top Biden campaign operative, tweeted, “Young people: You saved our butts. THANK YOU.”
Two days after the election, federal judge Mark Pittman struck down the bailout as an unconstitutional decree: “In this country, we are not ruled by an all-powerful executive with a pen and a phone. Instead, we are ruled by a Constitution that provides for three distinct and independent branches of government.” Pittman rejected the “emergency” basis of the order in part because Biden had proclaimed in September on “60 Minutes” that “the pandemic is over.” The following week, a federal appeals court in St. Louis unanimously voted to impose a nationwide “injunction considering the irreversible impact the Secretary’s debt forgiveness action would have” on “Americans who pay taxes to finance the government.”
Some activists believe Biden intentionally swindled young voters with a bait-and-switch scheme. Briahna Joy Gray, who was the press secretary for Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, asked, “Did Biden RIG student debt forgiveness to fail, just to help him in midterms?” She explained on Twitter: “They used the promise of student debt cancellation to induce young voter turn out—knowing it wasn’t going anywhere [because] they relied on faulty legal authority. Hard to convince me the Biden admin didn’t do this intentionally.” A student activist group called the Debt Collective is circulating a petition: “I refuse to pay a debt the President promised to cancel.”
Biden came up with a Solomonic solution—sawing taxpayers in half—to placate his enraged supporters. He announced on Twitter, “Republican special interests and elected officials sued to deny this relief even for their own constituents. It isn’t fair to ask tens of millions of borrowers eligible for relief to resume their student debt payments while the courts consider the lawsuit.” On November 22, Biden announced that he was extending the moratorium on repaying student debt until August 2023. That moratorium began in March 2020 during the first COVID lockdowns and has already cost taxpayers $155 billion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. When Biden announced his loan forgiveness decree in August, he promised, “The student-loan payment pause is gonna end. It is time for the payments to resume.” Biden betrayed that promise, apparently believing that no one should be obliged to fulfill their legal obligation as long as there was a snowball’s chance in hell that some judge would uphold his scheme. Extending the loan payment moratorium could give a crucial boost to Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, locked in a tight December 6 run-off election.
What happens when the latest moratorium extension ends in August 2023? Biden may be formally kicking off his re-election campaign at that time. And what better way to buy support than by extending a handout to one of his most important constituencies? In the 2022 mid-term elections, “52 percent of voters with college degrees supported Democrats while 42 percent of voters without degrees did so,” The Washington Post reported.
Protecting former students from the federal debts they voluntarily accepted has become one of the great human rights issues of our times. Michael Pierce, chief of the Student Borrower Protection Center, is calling for Biden to “make it clear that the student loan system will remain shut off as long as these partisan legal challenges persist. Borrowers’ fate is in Biden’s hands.”
And this is the ultimate problem for democracy. Student loan bailouts have extended Biden’s power over a huge swath of American voters. Each new federal benefit program extends political control over both the recipients and anyone forced to finance the handouts. Speaking to an AFL-CIO convention earlier this year, Biden shouted, “I don’t want to hear anymore of these lies about reckless spending. We’re changing people’s lives!” “Changing” means controlling—but only for their own good, or at least for the re-election of their benefactors
French philosopher Bertrand de Jouvenal warned, “Redistribution is in effect far less a redistribution of free income from the richer to the poorer, than a redistribution of power form the individual to the state.” If Biden’s loan repayment moratorium is extended through 2024, “a typical medical student who graduated in 2019 would effectively have $107,000 forgiven and a law school graduate would have $65,000 forgiven… New doctors receive almost ten times the benefit of the average borrower and $107,000 more than someone who never attended college,” the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget reported. Even The Washington Post editorial page slammed Biden’s student debt forgiveness decree as a “regressive, expensive mistake.”
But the inequity is irrelevant if the handouts enable Biden and his Democratic colleagues to perpetuate their grip on power. As legal fights over loan bailouts continue, Americans will continue to be assailed by claptrap about ex-students as a holy class of martyrs—or at least oppressed victims. But most of the self-proclaimed “best and brightest” are not smart enough to recognize how they have been converted into tools for Leviathan.
Jim Bovard is the author of Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), and 7 other books.
Medical clinic treating people injured by COVID shot opens in Italy
By Ken Hall | LifeSiteNews | November 28, 2022
LUCCA, Italy — A private medical clinic has opened in Lucca, Italy that is devoted to caring for patients who have been injured by the experimental COVID-19 vaccines.
The clinic was opened by a group of doctors and health workers who were recently reinstated to their positions after newly-elected Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government removed discriminatory legislation that barred vaccine-free Italians from working in healthcare.
An Italian medical rights group celebrated the clinic as “helpful” and “welcoming,” but a left-wing political party from Tuscany has attempted to pressure the mayor of Lucca to publicly disavow the clinic seeking to help heal those suffering from COVID vaccine injuries.
The local Partito Democratico (Democratic Party) released a statement saying “we believe the mayor needs to take a position, and distance himself from what is happening on this front in our city.”
The statement was made even after the party admitted that the group who started the clinic did so with the intention of helping the vaccine-injured, and that the group also wanted doctors to have freedom of conscience protections when practicing medicine.
Italy has flipped the script on COVID restrictions since the election of Meloni, who has admitted that Italy had the “most restrictive anti-COVID measures in the entire Western world,” but was still “among the countries with the highest numbers of deaths and infections.”
She vowed that her government “will not replicate that pattern in any way,” promising to never “limit fundamental freedoms.”
Under previous Prime Minister Mario Draghi, the then left-wing government had enacted severe measures against Italians who chose not to take the COVID jab, restricting them from many aspects of public life under the guise of the “Super Green Pass.”
Under the restrictions, all Italians were required to be jabbed or provide proof that they had previously recovered from COVID in order to work, and all those over 50 years old had to be vaccinated or they would be fined by the government on a monthly basis.
In response, Italians protested in massive numbers, and it is believed that support swelled for the populist Meloni as a result of her opposition to such measures.
Oblivion: the best cure?
The effects of lockdown, now becoming clearer by the day, should never be forgotten.
By Tom Jefferson | Trust the Evidence | November 29, 2022
My grandfather was a decorated WWI veteran. He was lucky and got back home minus a hand. My dad participated in the Battle of Britain, North African and Italian campaigns. He got home apparently unscathed. However, both had one thing in common: they would not speak of what they had done and seen. What they had been through was too terrible to describe, and people were not interested; it was all in the past. That is one of the reasons why we have wars: few people have any idea what it’s like.
It’s going that way with the most traumatic experience in this lifetime: lockdowns.
Looking at the media, you would think nothing extraordinary has happened since 2020.
Well, let me remind you.
Our civil liberties were severely curtailed, drones were sent after lone runners on deserted moorland, children could see but not touch toys in stores (if they were let in at all), our elders died abandoned in nursing homes or their own homes, governments spurted gibberish on the advice of modellers and overnight experts. The media ran a wall-to-wall campaign to get the populace to toe the line. Crooks were allowed to run away with billions of public money while massive amounts were spent on useless tests. That is why the Chancellor has a large hole in his books. While patients likely to be infected were moved around hospitals, in some casualties, separation consisted of taped bin bags stretched across walls, GPs were not accessible, and the police were checking people’s movements and compliance with government policies. Children were confined to home; people stopped exercising and took to drinking. People with serious illnesses did not get treated, partly because they were rightly scared of catching the plague when in hospital. Few people questioned what was going on.
Data, real data on which momentous decisions were made, were absent. We do not know how many real infectious cases or deaths attributable to SARS-CoV-2 there were. Even deceased who tested negative were wrapped up in the Covid death tally. So we cannot separate the impact of the agent from the self-inflicted devastation.
The current economic crisis has its genesis in the demented and wasteful response to an unknown unquantified threat, then came the war in Ukraine, but the lockdown came first. Remember how many businesses stopped paying taxes because they had gone bust or could not trade?
Parliament had little say in what went on while large swathes of politicians were trying to outdo each other in demanding more restrictions and closures.
Scientific evidence, when available, was used as a political weapon regardless of its quality and credibility.
So now that I have refreshed your memory and now we know that no one will ever be held responsible for the greatest catastrophe in our generation, I ask you, when will the next round be? There is ample precedent, so it’s only a matter of time.
The government is now bending over backwards it seems to address four problems: cancer, obesity, addiction and mental health, throwing more money at four problems which its policy magnified and worsened. I will save you the effort of searching. In the glossy press release, I failed to find any mention of restrictions, isolation or lockdown.
Perhaps my grandfather and father should have spoken about the war and reminded those who wanted to forget that oblivion is the road to perdition. For our democracy, our society and our families.
‘Critical Win’: Appeals Court Strikes Down San Diego Schools COVID Vaccine Mandate
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 28, 2022
In a precedent-setting decision for the State of California, a state appeals court last week ruled against the San Diego Unified School District’s (SDUSD) COVID-19 vaccine requirement for students.
The decision by California’s 4th District Court of Appeal upheld a December 2021 decision by a lower state court, which found school districts cannot impose vaccine mandates of their own — on top of the vaccines required by the state — as a precondition for classroom attendance.
The lawsuit was filed in October 2021 by the Let Them Choose initiative of Let Them Breathe, a California-based nonprofit advocacy group, challenging SDUSD’s mandate.
According to Let Them Choose, this was the first COVID-19 vaccine mandate in the U.S. to be struck down in a final ruling, and the new decision upholding the original court ruling “sets precedent for all California school districts.”
Remarking on the decision, Mary Holland, president and general counsel of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), told The Defender :
“It is great news that the California appellate court affirmed that vaccine mandates under California law must come from the state, not the school district.
“This is especially welcome news as the injection in question, the COVID-19 shot, is neither safe nor effective, nor even a vaccine in any normal sense as it fails to prevent infection and transmission. Kudos to ICAN [Informed Consent Action Network] and its lawyers for a critical win.”
According to the case history accompanying the court’s December 2021 ruling, a similar lawsuit was filed by the parent of a 16-year-old student in the SDUSD. The two lawsuits were then consolidated into a single case.
Attorneys for ICAN, an Austin-based advocacy group active in challenging various COVID-19-related mandates across the U.S. and pressing for the release of government data related to COVID-19 vaccine injuries, represented the parent who sued the SDUSD.
SDUSD was “one of a few districts in California” to set its own COVID-19 vaccine requirement for students. It would have applied to students 16 and over, for in-person classroom attendance and participation in extracurricular activities.
While medical exemptions were permitted, exemptions for religious and personal reasons were not, in line with stipulations set forth in California Senate Bill 277 (SB 277).
The mandate, which was scheduled to take effect in September 2021, would have placed unvaccinated students in “involuntary independent study” as of Jan. 24, 2022.
SDUSD’s vaccine mandate was never fully enforced, precisely because of the legal challenge filed almost immediately by Let Them Choose, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
In May 2022, the SDUSD paused the mandate until at least July 2023, although the reasons cited for this pause included “the vaccines’ lower effectiveness against the virus’ Omicron variant and amid delays in full federal approval of the vaccine for children under 16 years old,” the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
Court: ‘Independent study not a real choice’
The 4th District Court’s 19-page decision rejected multiple arguments by the SDUSD, including the school district’s claim that its mandate was aligned with its responsibility to keep students healthy and safe and that school districts can develop policies to “meet local needs.”
According to the ruling, the SDUSD mandate “unlawfully seeks to usurp [the] authority” of the California state legislature in enacting vaccine requirements for school children in the state.
According to the decision:
“The issue here is whether a school district may require students to be vaccinated for COVID-19 as a condition for both (1) attending in-person class, and (2) participating in extracurricular activities. The superior court determined there was a ‘statewide standard for school vaccination,’ leaving ‘no room for each of the over 1,000 individual school districts to impose a patchwork of additional vaccine mandates.’
“On independent review, we reach the same conclusion and affirm the judgment. … In sum … we reject the District’s primary contention that the Legislature left the door open for local school districts to require student vaccination for COVID-19 as a condition to attending in-person class.”
The vaccines required by the California Department of Public Health as a precondition for school admission include four doses of the polio vaccine, five doses of the DTaP/Tdap (diphtheria toxoid, tetanus toxoid, and acellular pertussis) vaccine, three doses of the hepatitis B vaccine, two doses of the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine, two doses of the varicella (chickenpox) vaccine and a new Tdap dose for grades 7-12.
The judge presiding over the original district court case regarding this lawsuit stated:
“I think that the state … has fully occupied this field, there’s a statewide standard, and a local school district simply doesn’t have the authority to do something inconsistent with the statewide standard.”
SDUSD also claimed its vaccine mandate was not really a mandate, because it allowed unvaccinated students to continue their classes via at-home “independent study.” But the court rejected this argument, calling it “a step backwards”:
“Finally, the District makes the strained argument that the Roadmap does not actually mandate students be vaccinated for COVID-19. Rather, it gives them the choice to either do so or be enrolled in independent study. … We doubt that students and their parents perceive a real choice. For some, independent study would likely be a step backwards …
“In any event, the District’s free choice argument is belied by Regulation 6025. It gives the school no choice but to ‘admit or allow continued attendance’ to any pupil whose parent or guardian has provided documentation of the 10 required immunizations and/or medical or applicable personal belief exemptions.”
The decision went on to equate “attendance” with “in-classroom learning,” stating:
“The plain meaning of ‘attendance’ in this context is in-classroom learning.
“To the extent the Roadmap requires a student who is fully vaccinated within the meaning of Regulation 6025 to choose between a mandated COVID-19 vaccination and involuntary independent study, it is a choice the Legislature does not permit the District to compel.”
Holland, in analyzing this aspect of the court’s decision, told The Defender, “The plain meaning of ‘attendance’ in this context is in-classroom learning.”
Ray Flores, senior counsel for CHD who analyzed the ruling, told The Defender :
“This case is a victory over rogue districts attempting to impose their own vaccine schedule. The court ruled, ‘If the District desired to condition school attendance on COVID-19 vaccination, it should have urged DPH [Department of Public Health] to follow the existing statutory procedure under section 120335, subdivision (b)(11) for adding new immunizations.
“Ironically, SB 277, which has been the bane of California parents’ existence, actually protected them in this case since the court took Judicial Notice of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s analysis of Senate Bill No. 277, which required a ‘statewide standard’ from which there could be no deviation. As the appellate court opined, ‘In a nutshell, local variations must give way to a uniform state standard.’”
Lawyers for Let Them Breathe and Let Them Choose also remarked on the decision. Attorney Lee Andelin stated:
“Today the California Court of Appeal affirmed the Superior Court’s judgment in Let Them Breathe’s lawsuit against San Diego Unified holding that school districts do not have authority to impose their own vaccination requirements on top of the standard series.
“This is a great win for children and the rule of law and ensures consistency statewide. The published opinion applies to all California school districts and sets important precedent to protect access to education.”
Attorney Arie Spangler said:
“This ruling affirms the sound judgment issued in January 2022 by Superior Court Judge John Meyer, which prevented San Diego Unified from implementing an illegal COVID vaccination mandate that would have locked thousands of San Diego students out of its classrooms.”
A new precedent — but only for California
As part of his legal analysis, Flores told The Defender the 4th District Court’s decision “is encouraging” and sets a “binding precedent” for the State of California — but not for other states.
Holland explained why the decision is not binding outside of California:
“Under the doctrine of stare decisis — to stand by things (previously) decided — higher courts only have binding authority over lower courts within their particular state or circuit. Courts of appeals and state courts do not bind courts outside the state or circuit. The only exception is the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Children’s Health Defense is readying itself for the time when state legislatures will be considering adding COVID-19 vaccines to their state schedules. This will be the call to action and mobilization in those states.”
Flores also noted that the appeals court “did not buy” the argument put forth by the SDUSD that a “choice between two options, even if both are not preferred, is still a choice,” in reference to the “choice” provided by the school district to continue attending classes via at-home “independent study.”
In a statement provided to the San Diego Union-Tribune, SDUSD spokesperson Mike Murad said the district “will consider its next steps” following the ruling.
A separate lawsuit against the City of San Diego over its vaccine requirement for municipal employees is still pending.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Australia to withdraw tens of thousands of Covid-19 fines
RT | November 29, 2022
The authorities in Australia’s largest state, New South Wales (NSW), have said that they will withdraw or refund tens of thousands of fines issued for violations of restrictions during the pandemic.
The move follows a defeat that the NSW government suffered in a court battle against free advocacy group Redfern Legal Centre on Tuesday.
The group launched a test case in July on behalf of three plaintiffs, arguing their fines of between AUS$1,000 ($673) to AUS$3,000 ($2,020) were invalid because the penalty notices didn’t describe the offense sufficiently.
“It’s not a big ask, if you’re going to fine someone for an offense, to set out what the offense is in the notice,” Katherine Richardson, the lawyer for the plaintiffs argued at the New South Wales Supreme Court, as cited by the Sydney Morning Herald.
The government’s lawyers have now conceded that the tickets really didn’t meet the legal requirements.
Shortly after the hearing, the Commissioner of Fines Administration said that 33,121 fines are going to be withdrawn, as they had been issued with similar wording to those of the plaintiffs’ notices.
Redfern Legal Centre has said on Twitter that the development was a “momentous win” for it.
However, the tax administration agency Revenue NSW insisted that the challenge had been on a “technical basis” and that the court ruling didn’t mean that offenses that led to the fines hadn’t been committed.
A full judgment in the case from presiding judge Dina Yehia is expected to be delivered next year.
Twitter quietly changes Covid-19 policy
RT | November 29, 2022
Twitter has said it will no longer enforce its coronavirus misinformation policy, according to an update on the platform’s Covid-19 transparency page that went largely unnoticed since it was posted last week. The move came as its new owner Elon Musk announced a “general amnesty” for previously suspended accounts.
The misinformation policy was initially developed in 2020 amid the outbreak of Covid-19 and was meant to combat “harmful” misleading posts about the coronavirus, government policies aimed at curbing its spread, and related vaccines.
Users who violated the rule received strikes. After two or three strikes, their accounts were suspended for 12 hours. After four, they would be locked out for a week, while offenders with more than five strikes were permanently banned from the platform.
According to statistics published by Twitter itself, between January 2020 and September 2022, the platform’s moderators challenged over 11.72 million accounts and suspended more than 11,000 for violating the rule. They also scrubbed nearly 100,000 pieces of content worldwide under the policy.
The extensive moderation policy became a topic of heated debate. Some called for more censorship of posts deemed to be harmful, while others argued this constituted suppression of free speech.
Since Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion last month, he has made a number of dramatic changes at the company, including laying off nearly two-thirds of its staff and significantly cutting the site’s moderation and management teams.
Ahead of Thanksgiving, the billionaire also vowed to extend a “general amnesty” to an unspecified number of suspended accounts after holding a Twitter poll, in which more than 72.4% out of 3.1 million respondents supported the move.
Critics have argued that the social networking service could soon become a hotbed for misinformation, right-wing extremism and hate speech. Musk, however, has insisted that he wants Twitter to become a level playing field and a bastion of free speech where people can peacefully exchange their views on a wide range of topics.
Separate Tech and State
By Ron Paul | November 28, 2022
Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) recently got in touch with his inner mobster and threatened Elon Musk — the new owner of Twitter and the CEO of electric car company Tesla and space ventures company SpaceX. He told Musk, “Fix your companies” or “Congress will.” As part of this threat, Markey referred to an ongoing National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigation into Tesla’s autopilot driving system and Twitter’s 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
Markey has done more than make threats: He is one of a group of Democratic senators who wrote to the FTC urging an investigation into whether Musk’s actions as the new owner of Twitter violated the consent decree or consumer protection laws. Since FTC Chair Lina Khan wants to investigate as many businesses as possible, it is likely she will respond favorably to the senators’ letter.
President Biden has also endorsed an investigation into the role foreign investors played in financing Musk’s Twitter purchase. Biden may be concerned that Musk is not likely to ban tweets regarding Hunter Biden’s business deals.
Concerns that Musk would allow tweets containing information embarrassing (or worse) to the Biden administration point to the real reason many Democratic politicians and progressive writers and activists are attacking Musk. They support efforts to suppress conservative, libertarian, and other “non-woke” speech on social media. They view the prospect of a major platform refusing to silence those who dissent from the woke mob or the Democratic Party establishment as a threat to their power. Musk further angered the left by committing what, to many Democrats (and Liz Cheney), is the ultimate hate crime — allowing Donald Trump back on Twitter.
The threat against Musk shows the threat to liberty is not just from big tech; it is from the alliance between big tech and big government.
Some conservatives think that increasing government’s power over social media is the correct way to make big tech respect free speech. However, increasing the US government’s power over social media can just end up putting more power behind government threats like those from Rep. Markey. Expanded government control over how social media companies conduct their business can also further incentivize the companies to work with the federal government to shut down free speech.
Once the government steps in with increased regulation, the risk is that greater government control over what is communicated on social media will follow. The question will just be who is calling the shots on the exercise of that control. Will the result be an increase of the liberal or “woke” pressure on social media companies to silence conservatives, libertarians, opponents of teaching critical race theory and transgenderism in schools, and those who question the safety and effectiveness of covid vaccines? Alternatively, will a new sort of pressure become dominant, maybe pressure to comply with conservative or Republican preferred limits on speech? Either way, liberty loses.
Big tech companies silence their users to curry favor with politicians and bureaucrats, often after “encouragement” from politicians and bureaucrats. Therefore, to end big tech’s censorship, Americans should demand that all government officials — including the president — not violate the First Amendment. We must work to put an end to government officials pressuring or even “encouraging” social media platforms either to silence any American citizen because of his opinions or to downplay or suppress any news story. The way to protect free speech online is to separate tech and state.
Copyright © 2022 by RonPaul Institute.
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