Conversation with Leslie Manookian, Health Freedom Defense Fund
— DianeShears (@DianeShears) March 17, 2025
Sasha Latypova
Mar 17, 2025 https://t.co/bm3UJhSiQP @sasha_latypova pic.twitter.com/haz4Uo2iYR
09:18. Any mandates are completely out of the scope of the EUA and the PREP Act.
09:22. We actually sued over this. The school district in Los Angeles mandated in March of 2021 the shots for all their employees, and we sued, and we said, "EUA, you can't do this," and they rescinded the mandate the next day.
But then something really weird happened. I'll just say this as an aside very quickly. The case had to work its way through the court, and so it did, and in July, one week before our case went to the district court in Los Angeles, the federal court, the Office of Legal Counsel is what it's called at DOJ, issued an opinion. They issue opinions on things, and they stated that the EUA language, which said that "recipients of the EUA product must be apprised of the risks and benefits, the risks of not using it, that those risks can include 'losing their jobs.'" Talk about contortionism, right? Who all was in on this, and why were they doing it? This was a Department of Justice, the top of the Department of Justice issued this letter totally because of our lawsuit saying, "No, no, no, oh, you can just tell them that they're losing their jobs, because this would be one of the risks."
10:57. LERMAN. And if you look at the law, there's no way that the law intended that because the law did not talk about . . . the law was talking about a CBR an attack and the risks associated with that and with the countermeasures. It wasn't risks associated with government activity or government mandates. And now, I mean now that Chevron is gone we weren't able to question government agencies; before we weren't able to question them at all. I don't know now if we can question them on this stuff.
11:25. MANOOKIAN. Certainly, much more. First of all, there's something else called context, or the "Context Doctrine," basically whenever there is a confusion or question about something, then the courts are bound to look at the context and the other words surrounding those words to understand what the intent was of Congress. And it's very clear, it's all about the health risks of either taking or refusing the product. the words are literally so twisted our attorneys were actually couldn't even believe that thing this office of legal counsel issued this opinion because it was so ridiculous so utterly ridiculous but it was intended to give the court cover and all of the employers across the country to give them cover with respect to Chevron Deference. I don't want to talk too much, but with respect to Chevron, I will say Chevron, what happened with Chevron was that for 40 years the courts were required to defer to a government agency's interpretations of statutes whenever there was a dispute over any ambiguity in the statute. So Chevron overturned that specific piece, but what's most important is that implied in the Chevron Doctrine that had been in place for all those years was this goodwill. You know, "Our federal agencies wouldn't lie to us." "They wouldn't deceive us." "They wouldn't twist." They were all accorded goodwill from the courts. And I think that has been undone by overturning Chevron, and by the incredible bad will that we've witnessed. So it's bigger than just overturning Chevron. It's all the kind of goodwill that was accorded to them during those years, and I think that's pretty much gone.
