A federal judge last month refused to alter her decision dismissing a sprawling lawsuit that claimed a COVID-19 vaccination requirement for medical personnel violated a panoply of laws, rules, constitutional provisions and treaties.

In 2023, 19 former employees of the University of Colorado Hospital Authority filed suit against state officials, alleging UCHA acted unlawfully by requiring personnel to receive the vaccine or else seek an exemption. Spearheaded by a lawyer who has pursued similar lawsuits in multiple states, the complaint broadly argued the plaintiffs were required to “inject an unlicensed investigational drug into their bodies.”

Last summer, U.S. District Court Judge Nina Y. Wang dismissed the claims on various grounds — including for a lack of legal footing and because there was no absolute right to maintain employment after refusing vaccination. However, the plaintiffs’ attorney quickly asked Wang to reconsider.

Her ruling would “effectively allow forced injection of … investigational drugs into workers,” wrote Louisiana-based attorney David J. Schexnaydre.

In a Dec. 9 order addressing Schexnaydre’s request, Wang pushed back on his characterization as “inaccurate.”

“Plaintiffs do not allege that they were forcibly vaccinated or forcibly subjected to unwanted medical treatments; they alleged that the UCHA Defendants imposed a vaccination requirement as a condition of Plaintiffs’ employment and that Plaintiffs chose to not receive the COVID-19 vaccine — i.e., they allege that they did, indeed, refuse unwanted medical treatments,” she wrote.

The plaintiffs’ lawsuit alleged they had the “absolute Constitutional and federally secured right” to refuse to take a drug not fully approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. They argued UCHA policy and state health orders requiring healthcare workers to be vaccinated violated federal law, an international treaty, the U.S. Constitution and even a congressional report.

“No person has legal authority to require anyone to inject an unlicensed investigational drug into their body as a condition for anything,” wrote Schexnaydre.

Lawyers for UCHA and the state’s health department characterized the lawsuit as a “nationwide litigation campaign” by Schexnaydre to equate employer vaccine mandates to coerced human experimentation. They noted that, by the time UCHA’s policy took effect, the FDA had already moved beyond emergency use authorization and had fully approved the first COVID-19 vaccine.

In a July 12 order, Wang concluded there were several reasons why the plaintiffs’ claims were not viable. Some defendants were immune from suit, other claims were barred under state law, the various legal sources cited by the plaintiffs did not give them grounds to sue and the vaccine mandate was related to a rational governmental purpose.

“Plaintiffs allege that their employer instituted a requirement that its employees be vaccinated against COVID-19 or receive a valid exemption, and that employees who were exempted would be required to wear a mask and be tested for COVID-19 weekly,” she wrote. “Even in light of Plaintiffs’ allegations that the COVID-19 vaccine was ‘investigational,’ this conduct is not ‘egregious and outrageous.'”

Weeks later, Schexnaydre asked Wang to reconsider. He argued she “misapprehended” the law and the facts and should have ruled that people have an ability to “refuse investigational drugs and unwanted medical treatments.”

In rejecting the motion, Wang pointed out the plaintiffs’ core claim was that vaccination-or-exemption should not be a condition of their continued public employment. She saw no reason to abandon her conclusion that such a mandate was lawful so long as it was rooted in a legitimate objective.

“Plaintiffs suggest that this ruling somehow created carte blanche authority for states to ‘mandate the use of investigational drugs and unwanted medical treatments as a condition of enjoying public benefits,’ but this is not so,” Wang wrote.

On Monday, Schexnaydre initiated an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. He also has an appeal pending in the San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit, after a federal judge in Washington dismissed a similar suit on similar grounds in 2023.

The case is Sweeney et al. v. University of Colorado Hospital Authority et al.