ICAN’s attorneys recently scored major wins in lawsuits brought against both UC Davis and UCLA for the UC system’s refusal to grant religious exemptions to students. As a result, the entire University of California (UC) school system has changed its vaccination policy to permit religious exemptions for all 295,000+ of its students!
Watch Lead Counsel, Aaron Siri, Esq., discuss this major win with Del Bigtree on The HighWire:
In January and February 2024, ICAN’s attorneys—led by Aaron Siri, who also happens to be an alumnus of UC Berkeley Law School—filed two successful lawsuits on behalf of students at University of California, Davis (UC Davis) and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
The lawsuits alleged the schools violated the First Amendment by providing a process for students to obtain a secular (medical) exemption but not a religious exemption to the school’s vaccine policy.
In the UC Davis case, the school was going to expel an online student who had already attended two of the four required in-person days, unless she took various vaccines against her religious beliefs.
In the UCLA case, the school was going to expel a graduate student after she already attended classes on campus for two semesters without the required vaccines—who was also an employee of the school, working on the campus—unless she received various vaccines against her religious beliefs.
Both cases settled after a California court entered a temporary restraining order mandating UC to allow one of the students to register, holding: “There is nothing in the record to suggest the religious exemption sought here poses a greater risk to [UC] Davis’s interests than the secular exemptions it already allows.”
On the heels of that win, ICAN’s attorneys threatened to bring more of these cases.
Now, ICAN is pleased to announce that, as of July 23, 2024, the University of California has changed its vaccination policy (applicable to all 295,000+ UC students) to add a religious exemption:
This policy change comes just over two weeks after the attorneys who regularly represent ICAN obtained settlements in both cases. This shows again the direct, real-world impact your support produces. Thank you for making this possible.
Help keep this momentum going by donating to our legal fund today.
