The Highwire with Del Bigtree - BREAKING NEWS: UC COLLEGES ALLOW RELIGIOUS EXEMPTIONS FOLLOWING TWO SUCCESSFUL ICAN-BACKED LAWSUITS

Episode Date: September 21, 2024

ICAN lead counsel, Aaron Siri, joins Del with breaking news on the latest ICAN legal win securing religious exemptions for the largest university system in the state of California.Hear about the cases that led to this monumental victory and what this means for over 295,00 students.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

So many of you are watching from all around the world. Many of you are new. Some just joined us during COVID, and some of you just joined us this week. So welcome to everybody. For those of you that may be new to this show, I just want to give you a little bit of a background. We really launched this show in 2017, very beginning of 2017, after I had spent a year touring with a documentary I made called Vaxed. I made that.

Really, I had been working at CBS on the daytime talks for the doctors. all the way up in about 2015 when I stumbled on the story of a whistleblower inside of the CDC named Dr. William Thompson. That is the heart of the story around Vaxed. That film released about a year later in 2016. But right at the same time that I stumbled on that story at the CDC, the same exact moment, suddenly on my show The Doctors, a senator, Senator Richard Pan, came onto the show and promoted a brand new bill he had, SB 277 in California that was going to take away any exemption, any ability to opt out of the

vaccine program for kids going to school from K through 12th grade. Now, at that moment, my child wasn't vaccinated. I didn't really make a big deal about it. It was just sort of how I was raised. I wasn't vaccinated as a kid. And I remember sitting backstage watching him on, you know, talk about this bill and thinking, oh my God, that's like the end of the world that I know, that how I was raised. And ultimately, there were pro. test trying to stop it, that we should have a right to decide what's injected into our children, when it's injected to our children. Really, there was always, you know, an anti-vaccine movement, if you want to call it that, certainly vaccine hesitancy, but really medical freedom

movement. But Senator Richard Pan, I would say really is the godfather of the modern movement because it exploded and there were rallies all over California. It looked a little bit like this. A rally at the Capitol today brought in hundreds of parents, children and activists, all because vaccine exemptions could change in California. A crowd of parents and children took to the steps of the Capitol speaking out against a bill requiring California school children to get vaccinated. Parents call the shots. Parents call the shots. Parents call the shots. Parents call the shots. Senate Bill 277 abolishes the personal belief exemption, allowing children to enroll in school without. the legally mandated vaccinations. The only kids that would be exempt from the vaccines are ones with physical and medical

conditions. If there is a valid medical exemption, the child would not have to get vaccinated and still be able to attend school. Senator Richard Pan, a pediatrician, proposed the bill. We are seeing ever larger outbreaks of diseases like pertussis or whooping cough, measles. And we certainly don't want to see those diseases or others that are prevented by vaccines to be spread into our community. We believe that God gave us the ability to heal from within. He gave us all the tools to heal naturally. So we're willing to risk a childhood illness over risking something more serious like autism.

But opponents are hoping the law never gets that far. They are already mobilizing to gather signatures for a ballot initiative and are holding rallies hoping to change minds before it takes effect in 2016. We will be out protesting every chance we get to just say we don't, we think it's an impingement on our our freedoms and our rights and their education. I want my kid to get an education. I was in California at that time. That was when I was just getting involved in making the documentary Vaxed, as I said, and

I was protested with my wife also, that I believed that we had a right to body autonomy. That really started a push as they tried to pass these laws all across the country taking away the religious exemption. Well, that's been one of the number one battles that we've been involved with with our nonprofit. We brought in an attorney, Aaron Siri, to represent our cases and start trying to push back and put up because SB 277 was passed. And then they said, well, there will still be medical exemptions and doctors will be free to do those. And then SB 276 came along. And it basically said, if you're even giving medical exemptions as a doctor in California, we're coming after you.

It started feeling for those of us that believed in body autonomy like we were living in Nazi Germany. Of course, there were other states that had already lost their, you know, religious exemptions years earlier, Mississippi, West Virginia, but we made it a mission. And I would say, you know, ending chronic illness and stopping manmade disease has been the primary goal of our nonprofit, informed consent action network. But at the heart of that, when we, you know, with all the science and research that we've done, vaccines are contributing to this massive rise in autoimmune and neurological disorders all over this country. We have the sickest nation of children in the industrialized world, really in the entire world. I don't think there's anyone with higher chronic illness now than the United States of America. And we have the sickest generation of children we've ever seen. And we've made it a personal goal to bring back the religious exemption ultimately.

I've been to many think tanks with all sorts of nonprofits around this issue. And when we all come together, we want different things. But every time we come down to one sort of consolidated thought, which is end all vaccine mandates. should always be a choice. Well, we won back the religious exemption in Mississippi. It's the first time it's ever been achieved by any nonprofit. They, since 1970s, hadn't had a religious exemption to opt out of the vaccine program. We won that back in April 17, 2020, 23. And since that moment, the way we, you know, the sort of legal argument that we found at work there, we've been using it in the other states. We're calling it free the five. Well, of course, at the heart of this is this question,

Are you ever going to be able to get to California? I mean, that place has gone so far, so many people, so much of our support is coming out of California. And I've been saying all along, we are fighting in every one of these states for you. But I want to be clear that, you know, what I think makes us a little bit different than some of the other nonprofits that have legal arms to them is a lot of times, they'll just tell you we're bringing this case and they'll raise funds off of that. And then they bring a lot of attention to it and the press comes out and the judges get agitated. And you end up losing a lot of the. those cases. So we've had a different approach. We really go out and we win a lot of different cases

that we don't talk about. We run our cases until we win. And the way we work is we don't just try to come through the front door, throw them open and say, give us back our exemption. You know, our exemption. We have a religious right, which is how the approach had been for decades before we got here. Instead, with Aaron Siri, it's like using a scalpel and slowly winning one little case at a time, choosing just the right cases that you build a bigger and bigger precedent to try and create a wave that can then maybe move the needle in somewhere like California, probably the hardest state now in the country. Well, that has been going on. We haven't been talking about it.

We've had little victories all along the way, but we don't want this state of California to know what we're up to or what we're trying to achieve here. Let's just let these cases go along. But just this week, we have had what we think is a milestone, a milestone victory, if you will. It's not the whole thing. We're not going to be able to get back the exemption for every kid in California, but it's pretty huge. And this is the breaking news right here. Breaking news, University of California allows religious exemptions on the heels of two successful I can-back lawsuits. That means every UC school in all of California,

will not be bringing back the religious exemption to talk about what that means and how that was achieved. I'm joined now by our legal representation, one of the great constitutional lawyers of all times, Aaron Siri. Aaron, first of all, congratulations. This is huge. It's really, really big. And so just some thoughts on, did you see this coming? Was it a surprise? guys it's great news for the over 295,000 University of California students that now have the option for a religious exemption to attend school without one or more vaccines if it violates

their convictions to not receive those products and did we see it coming well we've been suing the University of California for quite some time repeatedly and and and winning and there was more coming down the pipeline, as I'm sure they knew. So, yeah, I was not surprised at the end of the day. The question was just when. It's hard to know. But it was the expected end result of the onslaught, so to speak. Now, you know, obviously there's still people with their, you know, children in K through 12.

But a victory like this, to see all of the university system in California, the UC system, to make this decision, does that put pressure now on the state of California and, you know, the lower grades K through 12? Does this help you in that fight in those cases that we have ongoing right now? Yeah. I mean, here's the way I look at it. You're either, the pendulum is either swinging towards restoring rights, protecting rights, or it's moving in the other direction.

Right now the pendulum is moving in our direction. Yeah. I mean, outside the school arena, we fought back most mandates, certainly with regards to COVID vaccines and in many other arenas. And now with regards to childhood vaccines, the pendulum is moving in our direction. You know, Mississippi, as you mentioned, and now with the UC system as well, and as well in a number of other contexts that I don't, you know, we can get into in future shows after we've fully completed those legal maneuverings. With that said, they all are focus on one central principle.

And that central principle is, is look, if you can accommodate a secular reason to not vaccinate, whether it's a medical reason, whether it's for a host of other reasons, because you want to make a lot of money in a sports game. So you're going to let 10,000 people into an arena, you don't care about the vaccination status. And the point is that if you can accommodate for non-religious regions, you got to accommodate for religious reasons. And that's the argument we made in our Air Force case. That's the argument we made in our Army case.

That's the argument made in Mississippi. that's the argument we've been making in numerous cases around the country and we've been prevailing and most of them. And every single time we prevail, what we've done is we've created a little bridgehead in the legal precedent. The legal precedent gives us another case to cite. So for example, when we filed the case in the University of California, the first one, we cited to our case in Mississippi. We cited to our Air Force case. We cited some of our other cases. And then we won the first one. We then cited in the next UC case to all of that precedent plus the first UC case. see victory. And so, you know, that creates an ever-expanding body of precedent that supports the

proposition under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution that if you can accommodate somebody to give them an exemption for a non-religious reason, for a non-reason that's not based on their convictions, you need to do one based on their convictions as well, their religious beliefs, so to speak. So, yes, I think it has a massive impact in that regard. And, um, um, um, saying that that's bringing action that results in that happening for 295,000 plus students certainly will have an impact. And now is this something that you'll find in their manual? Does it change the language?

Like, what does this do? Do we have to now tell everyone we know that have kids in the university system or are they just going to see it? Is it going to be broadcast on a website? Like what what is the actual change that now happens? So the official manual for the University of California, if the guard, to this vaccination policy now has for the first time since eight years ago. So there used to be one in the University of California system of religious exemption.

They got rid of it on the heels of SB 277, which you mentioned earlier. Right, because remember, that law, just so everyone knows, SB 277 didn't actually go after the university system, but it just followed suit. Once they removed the religious exemption from K through 12, the university says, hey, let's do that too. We'll do that too. right so with so right and so these are California chose to do it separately because they're governed by a board of regents they're kind of their own little power structure in California massive power structure

they chose to do it and so what this does is it now restores the religious exemption for every vaccine it kicks in starting next semester it is now officially part of the policy manual the way that they will the degree to which that they will promote it and so forth that remains to be seen scene because I will tell you that here. Here's what it now says if you're looking at, especially if you're going into school next semester, students may request exceptions to any of these vaccination requirements premised on medical contraindications, religious objections, objections or disabilities. So that has been added back now officially. Again, that that's huge. You know, one of the things, how important is it? Now, I always get asked

this, are these class action lawsuits? Was it 100 students that were bringing the case for how you select the case because I think that's a huge part of this. A lot of, you know, and we're always worried. One of the things I'm always saying is, it's dangerous when you have a well-intentioned lawyer with a bad case, or maybe they just don't fully have the right argument like you're making. That can set precedent against us. If they go into California and they lose, then that gets used against us in court because the judge will say, well, this other case already said that you don't have that right. So how important were the cases, how many were there to achieve this? So when we bring these cases, we typically only bring them on behalf of one or two or a few individuals.

Okay. Because winning for them sets the precedent that everybody should be entitled to it. You know, the cases are, should be able to be, the result should be applied broadly. It's a different strategy in each situation. But in this instance, we brought the cases on behalf of individuals. So we had the first case we brought was behalf of an individual who was in the behalf of an individual who was an online program at the University of California. There were four in-person days as part of this online program.

This individual had already done two of them. So basically they're an online student. They only have to come to the school four times. They'd already done two of them. And now the school's saying, we're kicking you out because you're not vaccinated. Okay. Now, not only does that sound illogical, but that fact pattern actually fits really well into the way the legal analysis works, okay, with regards to under and over-inclusivity and so forth.

And so that factual posture obviously also pointed out like the absurdity of excluding this student. And so we were able to prevail and the judge granted a temporary restraining order and that converted into a preliminary injunction saying, no, no, no, no, you must register this student and that student in fact was allowed to continue to attend without vaccination. We then brought another suit. Okay. And then that's the second suit, there was a student who was in a graduates program, but also was an employee of the university.

So the student was already going on campus every day anyway, interact with students as part of her job, but yet was not going to be allowed to continue her undergrad, excuse me, her graduate program. You know, there's an old saying, and it is good facts, make good law, bad facts, make bad law. Why? Because the facts are,

posture of a specific case might determine its outcome, but then the principle that it results from that will be applied far more broadly than that one case. So if you have a good set of facts that fit more neatly into the existing precedent and so forth, those are the ones that maybe make more sense. I'll give you a classic example. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a pioneer of women's rights, and she did it through court cases in the court system. Her first major case before the Supreme Court was on behalf of a man, not a woman, a man, to establish, you need to protect based on gender. I'm not so, you know, the point is, is that yes, the factual posture matters, how neatly it fits matters. And so in that in that case,

they were basically saying it's not, you didn't need a vaccine requirement in order to be an employee, So all the employees can walk across the university all day, but it's dangerous the second you walk into a classroom as a student. It's almost like the standing is dangerous, wear a mask during COVID, sitting down, okay. At some point, some judge goes, this is ridiculous. And so by that, at what point, I mean, how many cases does it take? Did you have, you know, more cases lined up? Did you know it was only going to be two? the the attorneys for the university actually directly asked so um bringing more of these and we're like

of course and so and you know and they could see that we were going to no doubt and why wouldn't we um and so uh didn't you end up having like a website like if you feel like you've been wrong like one of those like come on and call us i mean that must be pretty intimidated when You're just like, are we going to get like a line of these things coming? Now, one of the things that you've been so great at is these depositions. We've got the deposition of Dr. Stanley Plotkin that I think has resulted, you know, the godfather of the vaccine program. You had him under oath for nine hours.

Eventually, he just wrote an article stating that we've been right. There have been no proper safety trials prior to Leisinger. I hope, if you've all been watching this show, you saw that happen. You've deposed Catherine Edwards, one of the other. authors on, plucking on vaccines, the Bible literally is what they call it on vaccines. In a case like this, were there depositions to be had? I mean, were there people, like big people that maybe we could have deposed? Yes. So there is a board essentially that decides on these policies. And you can imagine the board that decides on these policies

with regards to vaccination, the University of California system, is comprised with many folks who are viewed or considered leaders in this area of infectious disease and immunology and vaccinology, not only on the medical side, but on the legal side. And the next step in this lawsuit, the lawsuits that were pending out because we got the preliminary injunctions, would have been for depositions. And those folks would have likely been compelled to sit in a room. And I would have depose each of them for eight hours and gladly. I wonder how many sat there just like watching the plot in deposition that Catherine said, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. So I mean, so they bailed out. Essentially, they just basically conceded this case. We're just going to go ahead and put back to the legislation exemption. Do you think that any of that could be that some of those, you know, we're not going to mention names, but very luminaries of a pro-vaccine position on education, let's put it that way, that they just didn't want a public. deposition. Would they've been able to back out of it in any way? I mean, could they just say,

no, I'm not showing up for the deposition? Because we see that with the Congress and things, where people just seem to get away with just saying, I'm not showing up. You know, can they do that in a case like this? No. If they were subpoenaed and they have essential facts, which I would argue they all do, every one of them, then no, they would not and should not have been able to actually skirt out of it. They would have, what they should have faced is the two. to sit for the deposition or face the sanctions of the court, which could include up to jail time potentially. And so, no, they would have. And since it's a public institution, those depositions should not have been able to have been sealed either. So not only would they have to have sat for that

deposition, whether they liked it or not, it would have, it would have been on video and they wouldn't have been able to seal it up. Presumably, I'm assuming they didn't want to do that. Let me just, I'm going to take, I'm going to speculate. Okay. I'll allow you to have that speculation. So, Now then, as you said, this is, you know, one of those bridgeheads that we've achieved once again through our work with ICAN. The sponsors out there right now have funded this, have funded our ability to have your team work on this for, you know, years, really, and that's just California. Is this now, is this the type of precedents that you will then walk into West Virginia, I don't Connecticut, these other states, and say, look, we now have Mississippi, we see the UC schools. So this precedent is going to have power not just in California, but across the country and other cases.

Is it not? It would absolutely help, exactly. It pushes the ball forward tremendously. The ball is rolling in our direction. And I should say, we already have lawsuits pending in West Virginia, New York, and we are involved with one to some degree. So we have got lawsuits already going in lots of places, as you pointed out. And I love that about I can. And I love that about the way I can does things.

It doesn't announce typically a lawsuits when they're filed to fundraise off them. It waits until you win until there is a win to then announce it. And that has a number of benefits. And so that's one of the great things about the way ICANN does, the support's the legal work that it supports the legal work that it supports. I should also maybe just say more broadly, in terms of the university systems around the country, I'm not aware of another major university system that didn't have a religious exemption. Oh, wow. So even within California, there's another California system of universities.

They had a religious exemption. And so, you know, the old saying, as California goes, so does the rest of the country. And so, you know, one of the goals here was also to beat back University of California so that they would not become a contagion for the rest of the country and all the major systems around America who start following in their lead. So this is not only a win for the, you know, know the 295,000 plus students, University of California, I think it's also a win for the university students around this country where there may have been consideration of rolling it back,

watching what happened here. I can't imagine any other university system, major system, would consider doing that. And of course, as we just talked about, it will help more broadly, because now is something else we can cite, not just Mississippi, not just the military cases, not just a few others. Now also these UC cases, TRO decision as well, we can cite, and there's more coming down the pipeline. This bridgehead is building to where the goal here is to set that precedent firmly in place that if you have a secular exemption, you must provide an exemption based on your sincerely held convictions. Well, Aaron, I want to thank you for the incredible work that you've been doing. This really is a giant victory in one of the strongholds.

of vaccine ignorance in California. And so we're gonna keep funding that work. We're gonna keep funding. I know you work tirelessly. Please give our thanks to your incredible team and all the work. I know this is just a multi-pronged effort by a lot of very talented individuals.

And we're very grateful I speak for everybody that's got people going to college. I mean, this is a university system now that you know that your child can go to, and it's a big one. of great schools there. So I think that's just a really huge victory. I want to thank you for all of your work on that. Thank you. And I would love to put the pictures and names of the members of my team involved with this because they deserve a lot of praise and credit for it. They just often like

to work behind the scenes. They just want to grind and put their heads down. But it's our honor to do this work. Thank you. All right. Take care. I look forward to our next announcement.