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Court of Appeal:
Plaintiffs Challenging Vaccine Mandate Entitled to Fees
Opinion Says Statute Authorizes Recovery of Litigation Costs as Action Against School District Sought to Enforce Important Public Rights
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Div. One of the Fourth District Court of Appeal held yesterday that the plaintiffs who successfully challenged a local school district’s proposal to implement a policy requiring all students to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to attend in-person classes and participate in extracurricular activities are entitled to attorney fees as they acted to protect an important right affecting the public interest.
The plaintiffs requested fees under Code of Civil Procedure §1021.5, which provides:
“[A] court may award attorneys’ fees to a successful party…in any action which has resulted in the enforcement of an important right affecting the public interest if: (a) a significant benefit, whether pecuniary or nonpecuniary, has been conferred on the general public or a large class of persons, (b) the necessity and financial burden of private enforcement…are such as to make the award appropriate….”
Justice William Dato wrote the opinion reversing an order by San Diego Superior Court Judge Richard S. Whitney denying the motion for attorney fees. Dato said:
“We conclude that the plaintiffs’ lawsuit and the published appellate opinion it produced enforced an important public right affecting the public interest—the right to expect that California public school districts will comply with California state law establishing uniform statewide procedures for school immunization requirements. In doing so, the lawsuit conferred a substantial benefit on the general public or a large group of people within the meaning of section 1021.5.”
Presiding Justice Judith McConnell and Justice Terry B. O’Rourke joined in the opinion.
Writ Relief Sought
Appealing the denial were Let Them Choose and S.V., an individual parent, each of whom filed petitions for writ of mandate against the San Diego Unified School District—the second largest school district in California serving more than 100,000 students—over the proposed policy. The cases were consolidated in the trial court.
In November 2022, the same appellate panel affirmed the granting of the petitions by San Diego Superior Court Judge John S. Meyer, finding that the policy—described by the district as a “roadmap”—is preempted because the Legislature has occupied the area of school vaccination requirements and has decided not to mandate COVID-19 inoculation for in-class instruction.
After the decision, the plaintiffs returned to the superior court to request attorney fees under §1021.5. Whitney denied the request, saying that the district “was not planning to impair statutory or constitutional rights of the public, but to protect the health and safety of students” and so did not “adversely affect[] the public interest such that it is a party from whom attorney’s fees should be collected.”
Legislative Purpose
Dato noted that the purpose of §1021.5 is to “encourage lawsuits that further the public interest as expressed in constitutional and statutory law” by awarding attorney fees to those who successfully litigate the actions.
The district claims that the recovery of fees is inappropriate as the roadmap is only a proposal and would have eventually been rescinded even without the lawsuit. Unpersuaded, Dato said:
“In September 2021, the District announced its intention to unilaterally impose a vaccination requirement. Three months later, plaintiffs’ lawsuit resulted in a court order telling the District it could not do so, and that order was affirmed on appeal. Plaintiffs never contended, either exclusively or even primarily, that a vaccination requirement could never be imposed. Instead, they argued that the District had gone about it in the wrong way. As reflected in both plaintiffs’ initial complaints, the District could not adopt a local COVID-19 vaccine requirement because state law fully occupied the field of school immunizations and preempted local action.”
He continued:
“[P]laintiffs’ lawsuit accomplished exactly what it sought to achieve, furthering the strong public interest in a comprehensive statewide school immunization policy….By ensuring that the District followed proper state procedures, plaintiffs conferred a significant benefit on the general public and, in particular, on the parents and children in the District who, to that point, had not chosen to be vaccinated for COVID-19.”
The jurist added that the public interest was expanded by the published opinion confirming the invalidation of the policy, saying:
“This statement of legal principles benefits citizens throughout the state, not just residents living within the boundaries of the District, and it will continue to guide school officials into the future. Indeed, in the course of that opinion we specifically noted that the District’s appeal ‘present[ed] issues of broad public interest that are likely to recur.’….As we are in a unique position to assess the effect of a published appellate opinion and the reasons why publication was appropriate…the fact that we noted ‘broad public interest’ in the subject before the issue of attorney’s fees arose is significant.”
Best Intentions
The district asserts that it adopted the roadmap with the best intentions, and Dato acknowledged that “[b]oth judges who handled this case took note of the District’s desire to protect its students.”
The justice explained that Whitney “invoked a narrow exception that would justify denying a fee award if the losing party did nothing” to interfere with the rights of the public and “seemed to believe that a beneficial local vaccination requirement, even if technically preempted by state law, did nothing to compromise public rights.”
He wrote:
“The right to ‘due process’ is fundamental to our constitutional system, and the underlying case was ultimately about requiring that the District comply with established process and procedure. No one would argue that uniform statewide standards adopted by the People’s duly elected representatives after legislative study and debate can be ignored merely because the end sought to be achieved is arguably a virtuous one. In a similar fashion, when citizens bring a successful legal action to ensure that those statewide standards are followed, a court cannot deny them statutory attorney’s fees to which they would otherwise be entitled merely because it might disagree with their ultimate aim. A law that is not fairly applied to all protects none.”
The court remanded the matter for a determination as to the appropriate amount of fees to be awarded.
The case is Let Them Choose v. San Diego Unified School District, 2024 S.O.S. 2442.
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