The Brief

Even though Los Angeles Unified dropped its COVID vaccine mandate for school staff almost a year ago, a lawsuit accusing the district of violating workers’ rights can still move forward, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday.

The 2-1 ruling by a pair of federal judges appointed by former President Donald Trump revives a case that a lower court had dismissed. It also counters recent rulings by courts — including the 9th Circuit — that tossed lawsuits challenging expired COVID-19 rules on the grounds that the policies were no longer in effect.

The judges in the majority wrote that this case was different because they found L.A. Unified demonstrated a pattern of “withdrawing and reinstating its vaccination policies” over the course of the lawsuit.

“Accordingly, LAUSD has not carried its heavy burden to show that there is no reasonable possibility that it will again revert to imposing a similar policy,” the opinion states.

They also indicated they were open to arguments over the effectiveness of the vaccine, which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes as a safe way to build immunity against COVID-19.

“At this stage, we must accept Plaintiffs’ allegations that the vaccine does not prevent the spread of COVID-19 as true,” Judge Ryan Nelson wrote. The opinion characterizes that aspect of the ruling as preliminary and something that would be argued at a lower court.

In a concurring opinion, Judge Daniel Collins invoked Supreme Court precedent that “compulsory treatment for the health benefit of the person treated — as opposed to compulsory treatment for the health benefit of others — implicates the fundamental right to refuse medical treatment.”

The plaintiffs alleged that the vaccines do not prevent someone from becoming infected with COVID-19 and characterized it as a treatment rather than a “traditional vaccine.”

They argued that by requiring employees to get the COVID shot, the school district was interfering with workers’ rights to refuse medical treatment.

“No one with any credibility would tell you that the vaccine prevented COVID or stopped the spread,” said John Howard, a San Diego attorney who argued the case on behalf of a handful of Los Angeles Unified employees and an Idaho-based group called the Health Freedom Defense Fund that’s filed several other COVID vaccine lawsuits.

“But when the hysteria was going on, that’s exactly what pharmaceutical companies and others said,” Howard said. “It was false.”

The CDC says: “COVID-19 vaccines are effective at protecting people from getting seriously ill, being hospitalized, and dying.”

A 2022 study published in the medical journal Lancet found COVID vaccines reduced symptoms in infected people, but did not necessarily slow transmission, although previous research indicated vaccines were effective in slowing the spread of early COVID variants. The Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center states that COVID vaccines likely “reduce the risk of virus transmission but probably not completely in everyone.”

The school district can appeal the ruling to a larger panel of judges on the 9th Circuit, which covers nine states and has been considered the most liberal of the nation’s appellate circuits. If the new ruling stands, the lawsuit would return to the U.S. District Court for Central California in Los Angeles for further arguments.

“We are reviewing the 9th Circuit ruling and assessing the district’s options,” a spokesperson for the district said late Friday.

Lindsay Wiley, a law professor at UCLA and director of the school’s Health Law and Policy Program, said the judges’ finding against a government intervention is “extremely rare.”

“Judges applying this test are supposed to be highly deferential to the government’s rationale and scientific findings,” Wiley said. “It’s also notable that the judges in the majority went out of their way to reach the merits of the plaintiffs’ claim.”

Perhaps most importantly, she said, the judges in the majority said the century-old law that upholds vaccine requirements “does not apply unless the vaccine is effective in protecting others, not just the vaccinated person. This analysis is surprising and, I think, misguided.”

The ruling could have a “chilling effect” on government attempts to require vaccines in the future, Wiley said. “Governments should be careful to build the evidence base for their vaccination requirements, which are increasingly challenged by well-financed anti-vaccination groups in court.”

Courts toss lawsuits over expired COVID rules

Courts recently have dismissed similar complaints because California’s COVID public health emergency expired a year ago, ending state measures such as mask mandates and lockdowns.

In 2022, a 9th Circuit panel of 11 judges ruled that a lawsuit against Gov. Gavin Newsom over COVID-related school closures couldn’t move forward since schools had reopened and “there was no longer a live controversy.” Another ruling, last month in a California state appeals court, drew a similar conclusion in a lawsuit against Newsom over COVID safety guidelines.

In a dissenting opinion to the L.A. case, 9th Circuit Judge Michael Hawkins extensively cited the 2022 ruling on California school closures. He was appointed to the court by former President Bill Clinton.

“This case is over,” he wrote. “We cannot grant the sole relief sought by the Plaintiffs, an injunction against enforcement of the school district’s now rescinded COVID-19 vaccination policy.”

L.A. Unified's COVID vaccine mandate

The lawsuit against L.A. Unified stems from the district’s initial policy from March 2021 requiring all employees to show proof of having the COVID vaccine or risk losing their jobs. A group of employees sued, and the district tweaked the policy to allow employees to show a negative COVID test if they didn’t want to get the vaccine.

A judge dismissed that suit, but, in August 2021, the district re-instated the vaccine mandate as schools re-opened for in-person instruction. The employees filed another suit, this time with the Health Freedom Defense Fund.

L.A. Unified, the nation’s second largest school district with more than 600,000 students, closed for in-person instruction for more than a year during the pandemic, like most school districts in California. Los Angeles was hit hard by the disease. As of last week, nearly 36,000 people in L.A. County have died of COVID, one of the highest per-capita mortality rates in California and far above the national average, according to public health data.

In August 2021, the United Teachers of Los Angeles union voted to support the district’s vaccine mandate. Still, some district employees lost their jobs due to the district’s mandate, Howard said.

“People lost their homes, their careers. Some people had to leave the state. They had literally gone broke because of what L.A. Unified did to them,” he said. “It was appalling.”

Progressive forces in Los Angeles are taking aim at companies with bloated executive pay through a ballot initiative.

On Wednesday, a coalition led by hotel workers union Unite Here Local 11 launched a signature-gathering effort for a ballot proposition they called the "Overpaid CEO Tax." If the proposition makes the November ballot, it will ask voters to impose an additional city business tax on large companies with CEO pay that is exponentially higher than worker pay.

Representatives of some of Los Angeles' most powerful unions, including the Los Angeles teachers union UTLA, gathered in Hollywood to announce the launch. They spoke on the sidewalk outside of the Tesla Diner — a recently opened charging station and restaurant owned by world's richest man Elon Musk.

"A growing and dangerous divide is tearing Los Angeles apart. On the one side, corporate CEOs live in their own world," said Unite Here Local 11 co-president Kurt Petersen. "On the other side, workers … juggle two and three jobs, they make impossible choices between medicine and rent."

The initiative takes aim at big corporations. If passed by voters, the executive pay ordinance would impose an additional business tax on companies with at least 1,000 employees whose top executive makes more than 50 times the median worker pay in Los Angeles. Those funds would go toward low-income housing projects, sidewalk repairs and other projects.

The additional tax would be one to 10 times the typical city business tax. According to the city clerk's office, the current city business tax is between 0.1% and 0.425% of gross receipts.

The campaign is part of a bigger political fight over the coming Olympic Games and who will benefit from them.

The executive pay initiative is one of a series of competing ballot propositions launched by union and business interests after the Los Angeles City Council voted last year to raise the minimum wage for hotel and airport workers to $30 an hour by 2028.

That vote set off a cascade of responses from the companies it affected. A business group backed by Delta and United Airlines launched a referendum to repeal the wage increase. That effort eventually failed.

The fight around the so-called "Olympic wage" is still playing out. A coalition of business interests has introduced its own ballot initiative to eliminate the city business tax entirely. In December, City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson introduced a motion to delay the $30 minimum wage by two years.

Campaigners for the executive pay tax will be on the ground as hype around the Olympics ramps up. Ticket registration opened for fans on Wednesday morning, the same day union leaders gathered in Hollywood.

To land the ballot initiative on the November ballot, campaigners have 120 days to gather around 140,000 signatures from registered voters in the city of Los Angeles.

Facing a loss of state and federal funding and increased costs, Los Angeles County officials are considering cutting homeless services and programs by more than 25% in the next budget year.

If approved next month, the spending plan presented to the Board of Supervisors Tuesday would trim $219 million from homeless services and programs, slashing county street outreach efforts in half and closing most of the sites for the Pathway Home encampment clearing program.

Several supervisors pushed back on aspects of the spending plan and urged county staff to find ways to avoid some of the proposed cuts.

“ I'm not particularly happy with everything that I'm seeing,” Supervisor Hilda Solis said. “I've heard from my providers that their people are disappointed.”

L.A. County’s new Department of Homeless Services and Housing drafted the spending plan. In a presentation to supervisors, officials said the deep cuts were necessary because of the rising costs of operating existing shelter beds and the loss of tens of millions in temporary state and federal funding.

The proposal comes after county voters approved Measure A in 2024 to increase the sales tax rate and double county dollars dedicated to addressing the homelessness crisis.

“This is really challenging, and we’re making recommendations that nobody wants to be making,” department Director Sarah Mahin told supervisors.

After the department published a draft of the plan in November, authorities changed the proposal to avoid more than $80 million in additional program cuts. They did that by securing $39 million one-time state grants and implementing about $45 million in other cost-saving measures, officials said.

Dozens of homeless service providers on Tuesday thanked county officials for shrinking the initial $303 million shortfall and urged them to avoid further cuts to services.

“We truly appreciate the progress you've made, but now the remaining shortfall is devastating for Los Angeles and for organizations like ours that are already stretched to the limit,” said Georgia Hawley of Midnight Mission, a homeless shelter in Skid Row.

Garrett Lee, of Department of Mental Health's HOME Team, collaborates with LAHSA’s Homeless Engagement Team during outreach in the targeted COVID-19 testing efforts in the homeless community in 2020.

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Courtesy of Los Angeles County

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What’s driving the deficit?

Several factors are driving the budget deficit projected for the fiscal year that begins in July, according to L.A. County’s homelessness department.

• Shelter bed cost increases: The rates L.A. County pays shelter bed operators went up last year. It will now pay 46% more — an increase of $86 million — to maintain the same 6,000 shelter beds, officials said.
  
• Funds expiring: Several temporary funding sources — totaling about $185 million — have ended or will end in the next fiscal year, officials said. That includes $38 million in federal COVID relief and more than $80 million in state funding.
  
• Consumer spending: Sales tax revenue from Measure A is projected to decrease by $14.5 million in the next fiscal year because consumer spending is down.
  
• Carry-over funds: There are fewer one-time funds available from previous budget years that can be rolled into the coming budget year, officials say.  That number is down by $18 million.
  

Measure A looms large

Last year, L.A. County started collecting revenue through Measure A. The additional 0.5% sales tax approved by voters to address homelessness is expected to generate about $1 billion for L.A. County next budget year. That’s double the revenue generated under the county’s previous homelessness sales tax ordinance.

On Tuesday, service providers said the county cuts don’t make sense to voters who approved Measure A.

“This is not what voters intended when they doubled the tax on themselves to address the homelessness crisis,” said Katie Hill, CEO of Union Station Homeless Services, a Pasadena homelessness nonprofit.

Dozens of homeless services employees lined up to echo that message and demanding officials restore the full budget.

" My request is that you please not approve this plan without filling the gap first,” said Erin Thompson of Inner City Law Center, a nonprofit law firm. “Please find the funds.

Deandra Davis, from the homeless service provider HOPICS, said cutting programs doesn't end up saving the county money in the long run. The costs get pushed elsewhere.

“We shift these costs to jails and hospitals," she said.

Under Measure A, about 60% of revenue has to go toward homeless services. That’s about $625 million for next budget year.

Nearly 36%, or $372 million, must go to the L.A. County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency to support housing development. County homelessness officials said that agency is expected to take on some of the homelessness prevention functions cut from the county’s homeless services budget.

“Measure A has given the overall system more tools to address the homelessness crisis, but fewer of them are held directly by the county,” Supervisor Janice Hahn said Tuesday.

Proposed reductions

L.A. County’s latest homelessness budget proposal includes a $92 million reduction for the county’s Pathway Home program, which moves unhoused Angelenos out of tent encampments by offering them hotel room beds. Pathway Home would be reduced from more than 1,200 beds at 20 project sites to 460 beds at seven sites, officials said.

Fewer beds for the program will mean more tent encampments in areas it serves, officials said.

Solis and fellow Supervisor Holly Mitchell said the program has been crucial for their constituents.

“This continuing attack on Pathway Home is problematic,” Mitchell said at Tuesday’s meeting. “We are clearly heading in a direction where our ability to ultimately resolve homelessness and address encampments and continue to make the progress we've seen in the last couple of years will be severely constrained."

Holly J. Mitchell, an LA County Supervisor who represents the second district.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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The budget plan also includes $127 million in reductions to other programs, including at least 100 frontline worker jobs. Outreach and prevention-related programs would be hit hardest, officials said.

Street outreach-related programs would be reduced by 60% and staffing in those programs would be cut by about half.

Mahin said parts of the county outside the city of Los Angeles will be disproportionately affected by reductions to outreach programs. Her department recommended reductions to certain outreach teams working outside city limits, but not in L.A.

That’s because of legal obligations under a settlement of a major homelessness lawsuit brought against the city and county by The L.A. Alliance for Human Rights.

“There is a requirement due to the L.A. Alliance for the county to maintain a certain level of outreach services in the city of L.A. through next fiscal year,” Mahin told LAist.

Critics of the spending plan urged supervisors to look at other parts of the budget to help save programs still on the chopping block.

Lily Clark of HOPICS told county officials the cuts would hurt her unhoused clients.

"What we can't do is eliminate the programs that prevent homelessness and expect the crisis to improve,” Clark said. “ Every subsidy cut, every outreach program lost, every navigation team dismantled, each one represents a person who will fall through the cracks.”

Next steps

Solis said on Tuesday that she hopes to see changes to outreach spending and other recommendations before approving the plan next month.

“ I know we're gonna have opportunity to try to make some adjustments,” she said.

Mahin told LAist her department has been “turning over couch cushions” looking for other sources of funding to help address the planned cuts and reductions.

“Unless people are bringing other funding solutions to the table,” Mahin said, “My question is: we can make changes, but what would you like to cut instead?”

Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said local programs are getting cut because state and federal dollars dried up and costs rose, not because L.A. County cut spending.

“ We cannot invent dollars we no longer receive,” Horvath said. “We're the only level of government that has actually increased our investment. Every other level of government has decreased, and we cannot backfill these gaps.”

The board is expected to vote on the proposed budget Feb. 3.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta today announced an investigation into how and whether Elon Musk’s X and xAI broke the law in the past few weeks by enabling the spread of naked or sexual imagery without consent.

xAI reportedly updated its Grok artificial intelligence tool last month to allow image editing. Users on the social media platform X, which is connected to the tool, began using Grok to remove clothing in pictures of women and children.

“The avalanche of reports detailing the non-consensual sexually explicit material that xAI has produced and posted online in recent weeks is shocking,” Bonta said in a written statement. “This material, which depicts women and children in nude and sexually explicit situations, has been used to harass people across the internet. I urge xAI to take immediate action to ensure this goes no further.”

Bonta urged Californians who want to report depictions of them or their children undressed or commiting sexual acts to visit oag.ca.gov/report. In an emailed response, xAI did not address questions about the investigation.

Research obtained by Bloomberg found that X now produces more non-consensual naked or sexual imagery than any other website online. In a posting on X, Musk promised “consequences” for people who made illegal content with the tool. On Friday, Grok limited image editing to paying subscribers.

One potential route for Bonta to prosecute xAI is a law that went into effect just two weeks ago creating legal liability for the creation and distribution of “deepfake” pornography.

X and xAI appear to be violating the provisions of that law, known as AB 621, said Sam Dordulian, who previously worked in the sex crimes unit of the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office but today works in private practice as a lawyer for people in cases involving deepfakes or revenge porn.

Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, author of the law, told CalMatters in a statement last week that she reached out to prosecutors, including the attorney general’s office and the city attorney of San Francisco, to remind them that they can act under the law. What's happening on X, Bauer-Kahan said, is what AB 621 was designed to address.

“Real women are having their images manipulated without consent, and the psychological and reputational harm is devastating,” the San Ramon Democrat said in an emailed statement. “Underage children are having their images used to create child sexual abuse material, and these websites are knowingly facilitating it.”

A global concern

Bonta’s inquiry also comes shortly after a call for an investigation by Gov. Gavin Newsom, backlash from regulators in the European Union and India and bans on X in Malaysia, Indonesia, and potentially the United Kingdom. As Grok app downloads rise in Apple and Google app stores, lawmakers and advocates are calling for the smartphone makers to prohibit the application.

Why Grok created the feature the way it did and how it will respond to the controversy around it is unclear, and answers may not be forthcoming, since an analysis recently concluded that it’s the least transparent of major AI systems available today. xAI did not address questions about the investigation from CalMatters.

“The psychological and reputational harm is devastating.”Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, Democratic Assemblymember, San RamonEvidence of concrete harm from deepfakes is piling up. In 2024, the FBI warned that use of deepfake tools to extort young people is a growing problem that has led to instances of self harm and suicide. Multiple audits have found that child sexual abuse material is inside the training data of AI models, making them capable of geneating vulgar photos. A 2024 Center for Democracy and Technology survey found that 15% of high school students have heard of or seen sexually explicit imagery of someone they know at school in the past year.

The investigation announced today is the latest action by the attorney general to push AI companies to keep kids safe. Late last year, Bonta endorsed a bill that would have prevented chatbots that talk about self harm and engage in sexually explicit conversations from interacting with people under 18. He also joined attorneys general from 44 other states in sending a letter that questions why companies like Meta and OpenAI allow their chatbots to have sexually inappropriate conversations with minors.

California has passed roughly half a dozen laws since 2019 to protect people from deepfakes. The new law by Bauer-Kahan amends and strengthens a 2019 law, most significantly by allowing district attorneys to bring cases against companies that “recklessly aid and abet” the distribution of deepfakes without the consent of the person depicted nude or committing sexual acts. That means the average person can ask the attorney general or the district attorney where they live to file a case on their behalf. It also increases the maximum amount that a judge can award a person from $150,000 to $250,000. Under the law, a public prosecutor is not required to prove that an individual depictured in an AI generated nude or sexual image suffered actual harm to bring a case to court. Websites that refuse to comply within 30 days can face penalties of $25,000 per violation.

In addition to those measures, two 2024 laws (AB 1831 and SB 1381) expand the state’s definition of child pornography to make possession or distribution of artificially-generated child sexual abuse material illegal. Another required social media platforms to give people an easy way to request the immediate removal of a deepfake, and defines the posting of such material as a form of digital identity theft. A California law limiting the use of deepfakes in elections was signed into law last year but was struck down by a federal judge last summer following a lawsuit by X and Elon Musk.

Future reforms

Every new state law helps give lawyers like Dordulian a new avenue to address harmful uses of deepfakes, but he said more needs to be done to help people protect themselves. He said his clients face challenges proving violation of existing laws since they require distribution of explicit materials, for example with a messaging app or social media platform, for protections to kick in. In his experience, people who use nudify apps typically know each other, so distribution doesn’t always take place, and if it does, it can be hard to prove.

For example, he said, he has a client who works as a nanny who alleges that the father of the kids she takes care of made images of her using photos she posted on Instagram. The nanny found the images on his iPad. This discovery was disturbing for her and caused her emotional trauma, but since he can’t use deepfake laws he has to sue on the basis of negligence or emotional distress and laws that were never created to address deepfakes. Similarly, victims told CNBC last year that the distinction between creating and distributing deepfakes left a gap in the law in a number of U.S. states.

“The law needs to keep up with what’s really happening on the ground and what women are experiencing, which is just the simple act of creation itself is the problem,” Dordulian said.

California is at the forefront of passing laws to protect people from deepfakes, but existing law isn’t meeting the moment, said Jennifer Gibson, cofounder and director of Psst, a group created a little over a year ago that provides pro bono legal services to tech and AI workers interested in whistleblowing. A California law that went into effect Jan. 1 protects whistleblowers inside AI companies but only if they work on catastrophic risk that can kill more than 50 people or cause more than $1 billion in damages. If the law protected people who work on deepfakes, former X employees who detailed witnessing Grok generating illegal sexually explicit material last year to Business Insider would, Gibson said, have had protections if they shared the information with authorities.

“There needs to be a lot more protection for exactly this kind of scenario in which an insider sees that this is foreseeable, knows that this is going to happen, and they need somewhere to go to report to both to keep the company accountable and protect the public.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.