State Supreme Court deals another defeat to San Diego Unified's student COVID-19 vaccine mandate

© Provided by San Diego Union Tribune Gabe Calarco Rubio, 15, gets the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine booster shot at the UC San Diego Health Mobile Vaccine Clinic at Crawford High School in El Cerrito on Jan. 12, 2022. (Ariana Drehsler/For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

The California Supreme Court struck down San Diego Unified School District's student COVID-19 vaccine mandate this week and affirmed an appeals court ruling that school districts cannot create their own vaccine mandates.

On Wednesday, the state's highest court rejected a challenge to the lower court's November ruling in favor of Let Them Choose, an initiative of the anti-mask mandate group Let Them Breathe.

The group had first sued San Diego Unified in October 2021 over the district's plans to mandate the original COVID-19 vaccination for students 16 and older to attend school in person and participate in extracurricular activities.

Let Them Choose argued that the district lacked the legal authority to impose its own vaccine mandates, which it argued is something only the state can do. Judges at the district, appeals and now state Supreme Court levels agreed.

Let Them Breathe founder Sharon McKeeman said she was happy but not surprised that the ruling against San Diego Unified was upheld.

"This is the final finish line that we've crossed in protecting the rights of millions of California students against any unlawful COVID-19 vaccine mandates," McKeeman said. "We were able to keep San Diego Unified students in school, and now we've set precedent statewide, just making it clear that other school districts cannot exclude students that don't have the COVID-19 vaccine, or put forward their own mandates."

District officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.

San Diego Unified was one of a few school districts to try in 2021 to enforce its own student vaccine mandate, in addition to Los Angeles Unified and Oakland Unified.

Efforts to require the COVID-19 vaccine for in-person school attendance at a district or state level have since been dropped amid legal challenges and waning enthusiasm for COVID mitigation measures.

The San Diego Unified school board approved a student vaccine mandate in September 2021. The district has argued that it has the authority to require vaccination because it has a duty to keep students safe and healthy, and that the mandate was not really a mandate because it let unvaccinated students attend school virtually. The mandate allowed medical exemptions but not personal belief exemptions.

But the district was never able to fully enforce the mandate due to Let Them Choose's legal challenge, subsequent timing issues and then the news that the initial COVID vaccines were no longer as effective against newer COVID-19 variants. The mandate did not require additional boosters.

Earlier this month, state officials said they were giving up on their plans to implement a statewide student COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune.