Emily Kopp, Investigative Reporter
Government agencies will soon begin scrubbing federal employees’ COVID-19 vaccination records from their personnel files after a four-year-long legal battle over former President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Feds For Freedom announced Wednesday that it had reached a settlement with the Department of Justice (DOJ) that requires the Office of Personnel Management to direct federal agencies to expunge personnel records related to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, including vaccine status, non-compliance with the mandate, or exemption requests. The requirement must be issued in the next 60 days. Agencies will also be barred from considering COVID-19 vaccine status in hiring, firing and promotion decisions.
“The biggest thing for our members is that they are going to have their records scrubbed,” Feds For Freedom Executive Director Stephanie Weidle told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Our victory is a long-overdue confirmation of what we have asserted all along: COVID mandates were unconstitutional, immoral, and un-American,” Feds For Freedom President Marcus Thornton said in a statement.
The settlement represents “years of volunteer work and grassroots financial support,” said Feds For Freedom Co-Founder Jim Erdman.
The battle began in December 2021 when Feds For Freedom — then known as Feds for Medical Freedom, a group founded earlier that fall with approximately 9,000 federal employees — filed suit in Texas challenging the mandate, securing a nationwide injunction by January 2022 that paused the mandate’s enforcement. Biden formally revoked the mandate in May 2023. The group partnered with law firm Boyden Gray PLLC.
The DOJ does not admit wrongdoing in the settlement. Still, Feds For Freedom cast the settlement as an “implicit acknowledgment of the government’s overreach” and a “critical precedent” for future cases regarding personal medical choices and religious freedoms.
An employee can opt out of expunging their COVID vaccination records for any reason, which may be necessary for individuals with ongoing Equal Employment Opportunity Commission suits alleging hampered professional opportunities over the mandate, according to Weidle.
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – OCTOBER 25: Chicago police officers along with other city workers and their supporters protest at city hall the mayor’s vaccination policy for city employees on October 25, 2021 in Chicago, Illinois. The city has started to place police officers on unpaid leave for refusing to comply with the city’s requirements that they report their COVID-19 vaccination status. As of last week, only about 65 percent of the city’s police have complied with the order. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
The group expects agencies to supply certificates of destruction to confirm expungement. The group also signaled it would assist federal workers in submitting Freedom of Information Act requests and Privacy Act requests to verify.
The government will also pay a monetary settlement reimbursing some of the group’s legal fees, though some of the case was pursued pro bono.
Weidle said she was “thankful but not fully satisfied” with the outcome. She pointed to what she said were mixed messages from the Trump administration, with President Donald Trump on Wednesday praising Operation Warp Speed, the 2020 sprint to develop COVID-19 vaccines, within hours of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announcing he would pivot the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority away from the mRNA platform.
“But this is huge that we’ve gotten this far. Even a quiet acknowledgement from the federal government is remarkable considering that just last year the retaliation was continuing,” she said.
The DCNF revealed earlier this year that of the four outside advisors handpicked by Biden’s health officials to weigh in on the mandate, the majority recommended against a two-dose mRNA vaccine mandate for individuals with natural immunity.
update:
DOJ Will Expunge Employees’ COVID-19 Vaccination Records: Lawyers
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times
The government has agreed to a settlement that involves expunging records showing the COVID-19 vaccination status of employees, lawyers representing workers who sued said on Aug. 7.
Officials must expunge the records under the settlement and bar discrimination based on vaccine status, Feds for Freedom, the workers group, and its lawyers said in a statement.
An email to the Department of Justice attorney who filed a voluntary dismissal in the case on Thursday returned a message saying he is on leave until Aug. 11. The department’s media office did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.
The formal settlement has not been entered on the court docket, but lawyers for Feds for Freedom said it includes the reimbursement of some of the legal fees incurred in the case the organization brought against the government over the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal workers.
Feds for Freedom sued the government in 2021, after President Joe Biden imposed COVID-19 vaccine requirements on all federal workers. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown entered a preliminary injunction in January 2022 that blocked the mandate as the case proceeded, finding that Biden lacked the authority to issue such a mandate.
A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit several months later lifted the injunction, saying the federal workers who sued should have taken their complaints to an administrative board rather than the courts. The full appeals court in 2023 kept the mandate in place.
The Supreme Court in late 2023 vacated the rulings in the case because Biden had rescinded the mandate, meaning none of the decisions will serve as precedent in future cases.
Brown in March vacated the injunction. He also directed the government and plaintiffs to file a status report.
The government in filings since then requested extensions to respond, saying officials were discussing appropriate next steps for the litigation and that they were dealing with staffing issues.
Brown’s last order told the parties to enter a proposed briefing schedule no later than Aug. 7.
Assistant U.S. Attorney James Gillingham on Aug 7 said in a stipulation that the parties had agreed to the dismissal of the case with prejudice.
Biden defended the mandate, saying it prevented infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. President Donald Trump has criticized COVID-19 vaccine mandates, saying he supported people choosing not to receive a vaccine. In February, he signed an order that bars funding to schools that require COVID-19 vaccination.