When emergencies strike, first responders are immediately called on to help those in need. The job descriptions of police officers and firefighters mandate contact with people whose health conditions cannot be determined before their lives are saved. It would be logical to assume these brave individuals would want protection from any disease they might encounter while performing their critical work. But this is not the case. Some first responders in Los Angeles are organizing to aggressively fight a new vaccine mandate for all Los Angeles city employees.

The LA City Council responded to a recent spike in Delta-variant-related COVID-19 cases on July 28 with a 13-0 vote that enacted an order requiring all City employees to be fully vaccinated by October 1. Mayor Eric Garcetti signed the ordinance one day later.

City employees with valid medical or religious reasons are exempt. Unlike employees in many other jurisdictions, LA workers will not have the option to submit to weekly testing to assure negative results.

Two new anti-vaccine organizations, “Firefighters 4 Freedom,” and a subgroup of police officers called “Roll Call 4 Freedom” have been created to fight the City’s mandate. The firefighter’s website explains they are “a group of Stakeholders of the LAFD, (Los Angeles City Fire Department), who are extremely concerned and passionately dedicated to preserving our God Given Rights of Free Choice endowed to us by our Creator.”

It further explains that the group, now comprised of about 350 members, has a mission “to maintain human rights, constitutional rights, civil rights, and civil liberties as sovereign natural free human beings, and American citizens.” In bold type, their website explains that the organization’s goal is to “stop the mandated vaccinations for all City employees as well as the citizens of this great country.” It explains that the group wants to bring “education and truth” to everyone, and it then asks for donations and volunteers to help them “spread the word.”

The Los Angeles Times reports that one member of the group went on The Kate Dalley Show, a nationally syndicated radio show where he compared Garcetti’s mandate to those issued in Nazi Germany.

Both groups and their unions told the Times that they are worried about repercussions from their anti-mandate actions, such as promotions, transfers or work assignments. Unions reported that “the city will be less safe” if terminations or mandatory leave occur. An attorney for Firefighters 4 Freedom said a lawsuit is planned. One of its lawyers told the Times that the first responders’ case would be supported by a privacy section in the state constitution as well as by rights given under the state’s Medical Experimentation Act.

Ever since a landmark Supreme Court case was decided in 1905, courts have regularly sided with the need to protect public health above the safeguard of personal freedom. When the smallpox epidemic struck the country, Cambridge, Massachusetts sought to force vaccinations against the rampant disease. The New York Times reports that some people even burned their arms with nitric acid to make it look like they had received the scar that accompanies the smallpox inoculation.

After a suit by a local pastor who claimed the vaccine was “a violation of liberty,” that violates the 14^th Amendment, Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote, “upon the principle of self-defense, of paramount necessity, a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members.” He went on to say that “Liberty is not an absolute right in each person to be, in all times, and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint.”

Other vaccine mandate cases followed. One upheld most religious exemptions and another said that any restriction on liberty requires a rational relationship to a legitimate state interest.” Since the Los Angeles City mandate contains exemptions for religious reasons, any lawsuit filed on that basis will most likely fail. But many LA City employees belong to unions so vaccine mandates are likely to become fodder for future collective bargaining sessions. One provision that restricts promotions or transfers for the unvaccinated, for example, will not become effective until bargaining defines terms.

In addition to potential lawsuits, unions have also offered alternative proposals that would permit either proof of vaccination or proof of a recent negative test. Although they have yet to take any action similar to that of first responders, the union that represents over 10,000 workers at the Department of Water and Power also told the Times that they believed the city “overstepped by implementing provisions in its ordinance before the requisite bargaining is completed.”

President Biden has likely also stepped into the mandate foray, where his September Nine announcement that mandates COVID-19 vaccinations or rigorous testing for businesses employing more than 100 workers is sure to prompt additional challenges. For now, neither the President nor LA’s mayor wants to wait, believing they must put the health of their constituents first.