Thousands of employees of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) are expected to seek exemptions from the city’s vaccine mandate, as officers file a lawsuit against the city.
According to the Washington Post, “roughly 3,000” employees are expected to seek exemptions to the city’s mandate, which requires city employees to be vaccinated by early October. Individuals can seek exemptions for either medical or religious reasons. According to the Post, the vast majority are seeking religious exemptions.
“If those numbers hold up, nearly a quarter of the LAPD workforce will try to avoid vaccination,” the Post reported.
“We have seen a number of our personnel who have filed for an intent to have an exemption, based on either medical or sincerely held religious belief,” LAPD Chief Michel Moore told the Los Angeles Police Commission.
“The department will wait for the city to provide instructions relative to the interpretation and what will happen to those intentions to file,” he added.
The news coincides with a lawsuit filed Saturday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles by six LAPD officers, claiming the mandate “violates the employees’ constitutional rights to privacy and due process, and asks the court to provide immediate and permanent relief from the requirement,” as the Los Angeles Times reported.
The complaint adds that one of the individuals “could not assert a medical or religious exemption.” Others have already contracted and recovered from the virus and have natural immunity, leaving no reason to get the shot, which the mandate does not account for.
There are similar concerns across the country. One Florida firefighter, Maria Bernard, spoke to these concerns, slamming vaccine mandates during Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R-FL) Monday press conference in Newberry, Florida.
Bernard, an Orange County firefighter for 17 years, explained that she and her husband, who is also a first responder, already recovered from the coronavirus, yet they are subject to an Orange County mandate requiring thousands of union and nonunion employees to get vaccinated by September 30.
“If this mandate continues, not only will we lose our freedom of choice, but we will lose our jobs and our livelihood,” she warned.
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