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Twenty campus officers said they were unfairly fired from the Los Angeles Unified School District even after they “appropriately filed” for exemptions to its COVID-19 vaccination mandate.
In a suit filed Jan. 10, the peace and security officers claimed the district didn’t bother to discuss options and instead told the workers they would be fired if they did not comply.
“Each Plaintiff submitted to the District a request for an exemption and accommodation from the District’s vaccination policy and provided the requested supporting information and documentation,” the suit said.
“However, each exemption and accommodation request was denied by the District in summarily fashion. … The District’s attempt at even forming some semblance of a real interactive process was a mess to say the least.”
The suit went on to say that only some of the school officers were notified that they were denied the exemption prior to meeting district officials. They claimed the district only reiterated that unvaccinated employees would be fired “regardless of religious or medical status.”
The officers claim they have suffered emotional distress and lost wages, which also affected their pension.
The district required all employees to be vaccinated by Oct. 18 as COVID-19 numbers surged during the holidays and continued to climb into the new school year due to the fast-spreading Omicron variant.
The district previously allowed employees to get tested every week since the beginning of the pandemic two years ago. As of late Tuesday, 15 percent of district employees tested positive for COVID-19, officials said.
In the complaint, the officers said some of them decided to give up and got vaccinated because they could not afford to lose their jobs and had to support their families.
“These Plaintiffs bring suit here because they were coerced to waive and give up their rights as set forth herein,” according to the complaint.
“Other Plaintiffs were were subsequently terminated from employment. And still other Plaintiffs are on medical leave, but have been told that they will be terminated when they return from medical leave if they are unvaccinated.”
The district wouldn’t comment on the pending litigation, a spokesperson told the Post late Wednesday.
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