The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is being sued by parents concerned about mask mandates and obligatory COVID-19 testing for the coming school year.
The lawsuit, filed June 22 by Southern California law firm Tyler and Bursch LLP and Children’s Health Defense California, seeks to prohibit the LAUSD and county officials from imposing COVID-19 related mandates on healthy children wishing to return to in-person instruction.
The lawsuit is the first of its kind filed in California federal court related to students being targeted with “illegal and unnecessary COVID mandates,” the law firm said.
Defendants named in the suit include LAUSD superintendent Austin Beutner, all seven LAUSD board members, and Los Angeles County public health officers Dr. Muntu Davis and Dr. Barbara Ferrer.
The lawsuit contends that healthy school children are being forced to submit to polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing, and are required to download Microsoft’s “Daily Pass” which it said collects and disseminates private health data. Students will also be required to wear masks on campus.
“[The] right to a public education guaranteed to [the] plaintiffs’ minor children by the California Constitution cannot be made contingent upon plaintiffs’ consent to defendants violating other rights of their children,” the lawsuit said, adding that the parents are seeking an injunction to allow the children to attend physical schooling again immediately.
“[LAUSD] instituted the Daily Pass, which was basically a mandate to have a [PCR] test before you could come on campus, and a bunch of other invasive stuff that we feel should only be done by a medical doctor and interpreted by a medical doctor,” Alix Mayer, president of Children’s Health Defense California, told The Epoch Times.
“Otherwise, who is practicing medicine without a license? The school is, because they can’t interpret that test, and a medical doctor has to interpret the test in the context of the symptoms.
“There’s also the issue with a huge rate of false positives on those tests. And so a lot of children have to stay home rather than going to school based on the false positives and the false positives are happening at a very high rate.”
According to LAUSD’s website, the Daily Pass was released Feb. 22, with the district calling it “the first comprehensive system in the nation that coordinates health checks, COVID tests and vaccinations all in one simple, easy-to-use tool.”
Each day, students will be asked to log into the app to answer daily health questions such as whether they’re experiencing a fever, dry cough, shortness of breath, or loss of taste or smell.
Students will be required to get a COVID-19 test within seven days before returning to campus and submit the negative result to the app. In announcing the Daily Pass, superintendent Beutner praised the technology.
After the required steps are completed, the Daily Pass will generate a unique QR code for each student and staff member that will authorize entry to a specific LAUSD location for that day only. When an individual arrives on campus, they will have their QR code scanned by a faculty member and their temperature taken, which must be less than 100 degrees.
In addition, LAUSD said anonymized data from the Daily Pass will be used in the district’s research and health care collaborators to provide insights to create safe school environments.
“Microsoft and its unknown partners, agents, and assigns will be privy to students’ private health information, including genetic information gathered through the mandatory PCR testing,” the lawsuit said. “Parents, therefore, have legitimate concerns that their children’s personal health data, genetic material, and other private information will be circulated to other corporate and government entities without their explicit consent since they are being coerced into giving up their rights under federal and state law ... to be able to send their children to school.”
It continues, “Simply put, they are being forced to choose between their children’s right to an education and their children’s right to medical privacy and bodily autonomy. This is no choice at all.”
Mayer said that many of the effects of the protocols are borne most on traditionally disadvantaged communities.
“If [children] don’t want to get tested, then they have to learn from home,” she said. “But kids who grew up in families without a ton of money, don’t necessarily have a good computer, they don’t necessarily have good bandwidth, and they might not even have a quiet room in the house where they can learn, and so it’s really putting them at a major disadvantage.”
Asked for comment, an LAUSD spokesperson told The Epoch Times, “We have not been served with the suit, and we do not comment on pending litigation. However, the safety and well-being of our students remains our top priority.”
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