Cases
Stewart v. Walz
CASE SUMMARY
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and LSC forced Prof. Stewart, who had worked at the college for 30 years, to choose between losing his job or complying with a 2021-2022 Covid-19 vaccination or testing requirement for state employees that he opposed on philosophical, medical, and legal grounds. As Prof. Stewart argued during multiple disciplinary hearings, it made no sense to force him to get a vaccine that did not stop transmission, especially once he acquired immunity to Covid-19 in December 2021.
The Constitution does not ordinarily allow the government to mandate a medical treatment for an employee for the benefit of the recipient alone. Because the government had no legitimate, let alone compelling, interest in forcing Professor Stewart to undergo vaccination or testing that provided no benefit to the community, the mandate deprived him of his Fourteenth Amendment rights to substantive due process and equal protection under the law. It also defied the Supreme Court’s Unconstitutional Conditions Doctrine that forbids the government from requiring Americans to give up a constitutional right in order to receive a benefit or privilege.
Right after an LSC disciplinary hearing for resisting the mandate, Prof. Stewart emailed his students explaining that he would not be in class for the indefinite future because of the unjust and irrational policy. LSC Defendants cited that email among the reasons for his termination. As a public employee, Prof. Stewart was entitled to communicate with his students on matters of public concern, as well as to criticize his employer, so punishing him for sending this email constituted a retaliatory measure that unlawfully abridged his First Amendment rights.
