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United States of America, United States District Court, 11 May 2022, Steven Church et al. vs. Joseph R Biden et al.

Case overview

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Country
United States of America
Case ID
Steven Church et al. vs. Joseph R Biden et al.
Decision date
11 May 2022
Deciding body (English)
United States District Court
Type of body
Court
Type of Court (material scope)
Civil Court
Type of jurisdiction
Single jurisdiction system
Type of Court (territorial scope)
Local Court
Instance
1st Instance
Area
Vaccination
Outcome of the decision
Claim partially rejected

Case analisys

General Summary

The Plaintiffs were federal employees who claimed that the Covid-19 vaccination requirement in Executive Order 14043 (1) infringed upon their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion, (2) contravened the Religious Freedom Restoration Act ("RFRA") by "substantially burdening" their "sincerely held religious beliefs" which compelled them to abstain from receiving any Covid-19 vaccine, (3) violated their Fifth Amendment Right to Equal Protection, and (4) violated the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act ("FDCA"), by failing to provide them with an "option to accept or refuse administration" of a product available under emergency-use authorization. They filed these claims against Defendant President Biden and the head of the agency where the plaintiff was employed in his or her official capacity. Previously, the Plaintiffs had filed an Emergency Application for a Temporary Restraining Order and Motion for Preliminary Injunction, seeking to "enjoin the enforcement" of the Vaccine Mandates. The Court denied the Plaintiffs' request, concluding that the Plaintiffs had not demonstrated the required "certainty of irreparable harm." The Court also concluded that the Plaintiffs had failed to "show a likelihood of success that their claims were ripe for consideration." The Defendants filed their pending Motion to Dismiss which was considered in the ruling by the Court which held that the “Federal Employee Plaintiffs had not demonstrated that their remaining claims were constitutionally ripe because they are riddled with contingencies and speculation that impede judicial review."

Facts of the case

The Plaintiffs included eighteen federal civilian employees and two active-duty Marines. By virtue of their federal civilian and military employment, the Plaintiffs were subject to the Covid-19 vaccine mandates imposed under Executive Order 14043 and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin's August 24, 2021 order for the vaccination of military personnel. The Plaintiffs claimed that the vaccination requirements imposed by these orders infringed upon their religious freedoms under the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”).

Type of measure challenged
Federal government measure
Measures, actions, remedies claimed
Preliminary injunction
Individual / collective enforcement
Individual action brought by one or more individuals or legal persons exclusively in their own interest.
Nature of the parties
  • Claimant(s)
    Private collective
  • Defendant(s)
    Public
Type of procedure
Urgency
Reasoning of the deciding body

The Court analyzed the arguments of the plaintiffs and defendants and reasoned that: 

  1. According to the Plaintiffs, mandatory vaccination against Covid-19 "burdened" their right to freely exercise their religion in violation of the First Amendment and RFRA by requiring them to choose (a) to be vaccinated in contravention of their "sincerely held religious beliefs"; or (b) to be terminated from their jobs. But this argument hinged on "contingent future events that may not occur as anticipated, or indeed may not occur at all." As the Federal Employee Plaintiffs' exemption requests were still pending, they were not required to be vaccinated and they were not "subject to discipline." Moreover, the Court stated that in the event their exemption requests were ultimately approved, they would not have to be vaccinated against Covid-19, meaning the injuries alleged in the case under consideration might never occur.
  2. The Federal Employee Plaintiffs relied upon the recent decision by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, which granted a preliminary injunction against enforcement of Executive Order 14043, in support of their argument that their claims were ripe for judicial review. In that case, the Court rejected the government's argument that federal employee plaintiffs "who ha[d] not claimed exemptions" did not have ripe claims because, according to the Court, "at least some" of those plaintiffs "face an inevitable firing.” The Federal Employee Plaintiffs here contended that they too faced an "imminent" harm sufficient to demonstrate ripe claims, however, certain plaintiffs in the Feds For Medical Freedom case elected to forego vaccination without ever seeking a religious accommodation—and therefore never had such exception requests pending. Therefore, they were in a position different from the plaintiffs here, who did not face discipline or termination for failing to comply with Executive Order 14043 while their accommodation requests remained pending.
  3. In sum, the Court reasoned that the Federal Employee Plaintiffs' alleged injury of being "forced" to choose between their jobs and their religion rested on hypothetical predictions about the outcomes of their exemption requests and that the "mere potential" for future injury was insufficient to "render an issue ripe for review." Therefore, the Federal Employee Plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that the alleged deprivation of their right to freely exercise their religion was "imminent" or "certainly impending," and so they did not establish a ripe justiciable controversy.
  4. Finally, the Court agreed with the Defendants that the Court lacked jurisdiction over the Federal Employee Plaintiffs' claims because they were neither constitutionally nor prudentially ripe. The Court thus had to dismiss the Federal Employee Plaintiffs' claims for lack of jurisdiction. “Ripeness is a justiciability doctrine designed ‘to prevent the courts, through avoidance of premature adjudication, from entangling themselves in abstract disagreements over administrative policies, and also to protect the agencies from judicial interference until an administrative decision has been formalized and its effects felt in a concrete way by the challenging parties.'” Nat'l Park Hospitality Ass'n v. Dep't of Interior, 538 U.S. 803, 807-08 (2003) (quoting Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U.S. 136, 148-149 (1967)). The ripeness doctrine “generally deals with when a federal court can or should decide a case.” Am. Petrol. Inst. v. EPA, 683 F.3d 382, 386 (D.C. Cir. 2012). Part of the ripeness doctrine is also “subsumed into the Article III requirement of standing, which requires a petitioner to allege inter alia an injury-in-fact that is ‘imminent' or ‘certainly impending.'” Id. (citing Nat'l Treasury Emps. Union v. United States, 101 F.3d 1423, 1427-28 (D.C. Cir. 1996)). For a claim to be ripe under Article III, the plaintiff “must establish constitutional minima akin to that of standing by showing an injury-in-fact; allegations of possible future injury do not satisfy this requirement.” Finca Santa Elena, Inc. v. U.S. Army Corps of Eng'rs, 873 F.Supp.2d 363, 368 (D.D.C. 2012) (citing Wyo. Outdoor Council v. U.S. Forest Serv., 165 F.3d 43, 48 (D.C. Cir. 1999)). In other words, a case is not “constitutionally” ripe when it is “dependent on ‘contingent future events that may not occur as anticipated, or indeed may not occur at all.'” Trump v. New York, 141 S.Ct. 530, 535 (2020) (quoting Texas v. United States, 523 U.S. 296, 300 (1998)).
Conclusions of the deciding body

The Court concluded that the Federal Employees' claims were not constitutionally ripe, and that the Court lacked jurisdiction over the Federal Employee Plaintiffs' claims. It partially granted the Defendants' Motion to Dismiss with regard to those claims. The Court held the Defendants' Motion to Dismiss with regard to the Service Member Plaintiffs, and would address those claims in a separate Memorandum Opinion.

Balancing Fundamental Rights and Fundamental Freedoms

Fundamental Right(s) involved
Freedom of religion
Fundamental Right(s) instruments (constitutional provisions, international conventions and treaties)
  • Right to the free exercise of religion, First Amendment, Constitution of the United States of America
  • Right to Equal Protection, Fifth Amendment, Constitution of the United States of America
Rights and freedoms specifically identified as (possibly) conflicting with the right to health
Health v. freedom of religion
Author of the case note
Maíra Tito, Research Assistant, NOVA School of Law, Lisbon
Published by Marco Nicolò on 27 October 2022

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