CHICAGO, IL — Chicago’s vaccine mandate for city workers is being challenged in court again.
Downstate attorney Thomas DeVore, who has been at the forefront of the legal fight against Illinois’ COVID restrictions, is asking a Sangamon County judge to throw out the city of Chicago’s vaccine-or-test mandate for city workers.
The lawsuit is seeking a temporary restraining order forbidding the city from enforcing the mandate, and potentially firing employees who do not comply.
DeVore contends the city’s vaccine policy is worthless because Chicago as a municipal body does not have the legal right to adopt it.
“Only the agent acting on behalf of the city can adopt anything and that document is completely devoid of anything that suggests that it was adopted by anyone, the city council, the board of health, the mayor, etc,” DeVore said.
The city’s vaccine mandates have been challenged on various fronts to no avail.
A second attempt to pressure Mayor Lori Lightfoot to change the vaccine mandate failed last week after not enough members of the City Council showed up for a special meeting to discuss the issue.
Lightfoot has said she will discipline city workers who violate the policy, but there will not be a “mass firing” of police officers. She reported 16 police officers are currently on no pay status for violating the vaccine mandate.
DeVore, who has announced his candidacy for Illinois Attorney General, was successful in getting Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s mask mandate in Illinois schools overturned. Sangamon County Judge Rayleen Grischow determined state agencies under Pritzker’s control had illegally issued the emergency rules, and ultimately violated the due process rights of students, their parents and educators.
Pritzker, who is named in this latest lawsuit challenging Chicago’s vaccine mandate, doesn’t have much faith it will succeed.
“They are people that wanted to tear down the system of mitigations that we put in place since the very beginning,” Pritzker said. “They are continuing to do it today. They were wrong then and they are wrong now.”
Neither the state Supreme Court nor an appeals court granted Pritzker’s request to throw out the lower court’s school mask ruling.
“He lost in the trial court with Judge Grischow, he lost at the appellate court, he lost at the Supreme Court, he has lost every time,” DeVore said of Pritzker. “He needs to stick to whatever it is he does and leave the thinking to the rest of us.”
