Fired College Professor Sues Tim Walz over Minnesota’s Covid Vaccine Mandate
A former ethics professor at a taxpayer funded community college in Minnesota is suing Governor Tim Walz after he was fired for refusing to comply with the state’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate for government employees and expressing his opinions on the matter to his students.
Professor Russell Stewart filed a complaint in federal court Wednesday against Walz and the leadership at Lake Superior College over his March 2022 termination for non-compliance with the Covid-19 vaccine mandate and a September 2021 email he sent to students explaining his position, National Review has learned.
The lawsuit argues Stewart’s rights under the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment were violated by the Covid-19 mandate and punishment for speaking out against it at a publicly funded institution. Steward was an ethics professor for three decades and held a position equivalent to tenured faculty for 27 years. He is asking for reinstatement to his prior position and for the court to declare his Constitutional rights were violated.
“By forcing Professor Stewart to submit to vaccination or frequent testing, Policy #1446 violated his right to refuse medical treatment, encompassed by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process clause. And by conditioning his continued employment upon his submission to this policy, Defendants created an unconstitutional condition,” the complaint reads.
“Similarly, by treating Professor Stewart (once he acquired immunity post-infection) differently from his vaccinated peers, Defendants violated his right to Equal Protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. Finally, by punishing him for speaking to his students on a matter of public concern, when such speech was not in violation of any LSC policy, Defendants violated his First Amendment rights.”
Stewart is being represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a conservative legal group devoted to fighting government overreach. The non-partisan group is known for fighting the federal bureaucracy and recently filed a legal challenge to some of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on China.
NR has reached out to Lake Superior College and Walz’s office for comment.
Walz enacted Minnesota’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate for state employees returning to the workplace in August 2021 when the Delta variant was spreading rapidly. The mandate, known as Policy 1446, required either proof of vaccination or weekly testing beginning the following month.
Walz’s mandate appeared to sidestep state law allowing individuals to refuse medical treatment by invoking the state’s authority as an employer to require vaccines or testing. He created the employer mandate a month after his state of emergency for Covid-19 ended, meaning the mandate was not an emergency measure.
Walz, a progressive Democrat, was former Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate in the 2024 presidential election. His subpar performance on the debate stage and campaign trail made him the target of substantial criticism following Harris’s stinging loss to President Donald Trump this past November. Despite the failed campaign, Walz remains a prominent Democratic figure and has toured the country to attack the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers.
Stewart submitted forms in September 2021 notifying Lake Superior College that he would not disclose his vaccine status or consent to Policy 1446. On September 23, Stewart told Lake Superior College vice president of academic and student affairs Linda Kingston that he did not intend to comply with Policy 1446 because it was illegal and arbitrarily violated his rights.
Kingston, LSC human resources director Jestina Vichourek, and a union representative held a meeting with Stewart on September 27, 2021. LSC offered Steward an alternative testing consent form and he rejected it out of concerns about data privacy. He also rejected an alternative testing method involving saliva because he opposed any kind of testing.
As a result, Vichorek put Stewart on unpaid leave until he cooperated with the vaccine mandate, and was barred from being on campus or teaching his classes, even the online ones. Stewart emailed his students on September 27 explaining to them what was going on and his opposition to the workplace Covid-19 vaccine mandate because it used coercion to undermine bodily autonomy. At no point was Stewart told he could not use his work email or communicate with students.
“I love my work and wish that I could continue to teach my classes but the administration has forbidden that. I am deeply sorry that it has come to this, but I refuse to be coerced into doing something that violates fundamental rights,” Stewart said in the email.
“I know you will have many questions. I will not be in a position to answer them. In many ways I am as shocked and puzzled as you are.”
Vichorek subsequently informed Stewart that he was the subject of a misconduct investigation for his non-compliance and expression of his political opinions with his LSC email address. The result of the investigation was a two day suspension without pay for his non-compliance and allegedly disregarding Kingston’s supposed instruction not to use his email.
April 10, 2025
Originally Published in National Review