In a significant about-face, government officials in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 26 postponed a policy that would have required proof of vaccination for COVID-19 for all students age 12 and over for the new school year — just days after announcing the policy. This announcement comes on the face of a related development, just one day prior, when a D.C. Superior Court judge struck down the district’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for government workers. The policy had been challenged by the D.C. Police Union earlier in the year.
In an Aug. 26 letter to school officials in the district, Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn introduced a “staggered” approach for the implementation and enforcement of the district’s school vaccine mandate. Under the new policy, students 12 and older now have a Jan. 3, 2023, deadline to receive the two-dose primary series of COVID-19 vaccines, after which they would face expulsion.
According to Kihn, the aim of this new approach is to provide school administrators “additional time to prepare and for students to get their COVID-19 vaccinations.” Remarking on the postponement of the district’s policy, Mary Holland, president and general counsel of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), told The Defender: “The district imposed a back-to-school COVID shot mandate that no other public school district in the country has imposed — and just walked it back to January 2023 from its proposed deadline in early September. “The district has enacted dangerous policies that deny people the informed consent to which they are entitled by law. I am pleased that the courts have played a constructive role in checking some of the district’s worst abuses.”