Cases & Developments

Order granting-in-part Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss. Plaintiff, a former nursing student at Mount St. Joseph University who had been diagnosed with multiple disabilities, including depression, anxiety, and brain tumors, brought various civil rights and Fourth Amendment claims under §1983 and disability discrimination claims against the University and multiple officials after he was denied a religious exemption to the University’s COVID-19 vaccination policy. Plaintiff also alleged that campus police had questioned him about his decision not to receive a vaccine. In dismissing plaintiff’s civil rights claims, the court found that the University officials who established the vaccination policy were private persons and employees of a private entity who neither acted in a public function nor exercised state coercive power. It ruled that plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment claim against the campus police officer failed, finding that no seizure took place because a reasonable person in the circumstances alleged would have believed they were free to leave, and that the officers were, accordingly, entitled to qualified immunity. In dismissing his disability discrimination claim, the court noted that though he had submitted medical documentation indicating “a medical need to avoid taking COVID vaccines,” he had not alleged what condition gave rise to this need. The court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over state law claims.