A group of former City of Bellingham employees and contractors is asking the United States Supreme Court to take up their lawsuit challenging the COVID-19 vaccine mandate that Mayor Seth Fleetwood issued in September 2021, after two lower federal courts dismissed the case. The Supreme Court has not yet decided whether it will hear the case.
Fleetwood's executive order required COVID-19 vaccinations for city employees, volunteers, and contractors as a condition of employment or continued city contract work. Seventeen city employees were fired for refusing to comply with the mandate. Six others resigned rather than comply, and four more lost their jobs under a separate but parallel state-level vaccine requirement that Washington Gov. Jay Inslee had issued for state employees and certain contractors.
The Legal Arguments at Stake
The plaintiffs argue that the mandate forced workers to choose between their jobs and a medical decision they did not want to make, a choice they contend violated their rights. Their legal case leans heavily on the federal PREP Act, the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, which was enacted to provide liability protections for entities involved in the development and distribution of countermeasures during a declared public health emergency.
The plaintiffs' attorneys argue that the PREP Act's liability shield should also limit governments' ability to compel vaccination as a condition of employment, an interpretation that legal scholars have described as a novel and contested reading of the statute. The PREP Act was primarily designed to protect pharmaceutical companies, distributors, and health care providers from lawsuits related to vaccines and other medical countermeasures, not to restrict government employment policy.
Both the federal district court that first heard the case and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed it, finding that the mandate was supported by existing legal precedent and public health considerations. The Ninth Circuit covers most of the western United States and has generally upheld government vaccine mandates issued during the COVID-19 emergency, consistent with a long line of Supreme Court precedent dating back to the 1905 case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts.
Attorneys for the City of Bellingham have waived their initial response to the Supreme Court petition unless the court specifically requests one, a standard procedural move in cases where a party is confident the court will decline to hear the appeal. The Supreme Court accepts only a small fraction of petitions it receives each term, generally focusing on cases that present novel legal questions or circuit splits where different federal appeals courts have ruled differently on the same issue.
What It Would Mean If the Court Takes the Case
If the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear the case, it would put Bellingham's COVID-era employment policy at the center of a national legal debate about the scope of government authority to mandate vaccinations as a condition of public employment. That debate has remained unresolved in a number of jurisdictions, with some courts upholding mandates and others finding procedural or constitutional grounds to limit them.
A Supreme Court ruling in favor of the plaintiffs could have far-reaching consequences for how cities and counties across the country structure public health requirements in future emergencies. A ruling affirming the lower courts' decisions would close the legal door on this particular challenge and reinforce the existing precedent supporting government employer authority in public health emergencies.
The case has attracted attention beyond Bellingham because the underlying legal question, whether and how the PREP Act intersects with government employment mandates, has not been squarely addressed by the Supreme Court. That novelty makes it a plausible candidate for review, even if the odds remain low.
Background on Bellingham's Mandate
Mayor Fleetwood issued the executive order in September 2021 as COVID-19 delta variant cases were surging across the Pacific Northwest. At the time, most major employers in Washington state and across the country were grappling with whether to mandate vaccinations, and the City of Bellingham's decision to require them for its workforce put it in line with what many other governments and large employers were doing.
The mandate affected a range of city departments, from the City of Bellingham police and fire departments to parks, public works, and administrative offices. The 17 employees who were terminated represented a small fraction of the city's total workforce, but their cases drew sustained attention from groups opposing vaccine requirements nationwide.
The case is now in the Supreme Court's petition queue. Residents who want to follow its progress can monitor the court's docket through the Supreme Court's official website. The court typically acts on pending petitions during its regular conference dates throughout the fall, with decisions on whether to grant or deny review announced on the court's order list.
