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Attorney Thomas DeVore filed the case in Sangamon County Circuit
Court. The districts include Chicago Public Schools to schools
in the Springfield area and beyond. The suit seeks judgment
against vaccine or testing and mask mandates.
DeVore said the law requires due process for someone to be
forced to be masked or to take a vaccine or test.
“And yet you have all these policies and mandates and stuff
trying to coerce people in the most extraordinary ways to get
them to do these things, threatening people’s financial
livelihood if they don't comply, and the law doesn’t allow it,”
DeVore told WMAY. “It’s absolutely ridiculous.”
Teachers’ jobs have been threatened if they don’t comply.
DeVore said Gov. J.B. Pritzker is included in the suit,
alongside more than 20 schools, because it’s his mandates that
put teachers in what he said was an untenable situation.
“What he tries to do is weaponize these administrative agencies
that he absolutely controls with an iron fist and tries to
coerce them into putting our citizens into these positions that
if you don’t comply, ‘we’re going to destroy your life,’” DeVore
said.
Part of DeVore’s case says the mandates violate the Health Care
Right of Conscience Act.
Pritzker signed a measure that beginning June 1 amends the
decades-old law prohibiting discrimination against people that
object to COVID-19 medical procedures.
DeVore downplayed the measure as a declaration.
“What they passed was not an amendment to the Health Care Right
of Conscience Act,” DeVore said. “It absolutely means nothing
and has no legal impact on the law.”
Critics of the law, which narrowly passed with bipartisan
opposition, say “This Section is a declaration of existing law
and shall not be construed as a new enactment.”
Pritzker and supporters of the measure say it’s meant to clarify
that enforcing mitigations of COVID-19 is carved out of the law.
DeVore has similar pending challenges against schools over mask
and exclusion policies impacting students that have been
consolidated into Sangamon County.
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