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Chicago City Hall wins restraining order against police union boss in battle over vaccine mandate

Chicago and the local Fraternal Order of Police filed dueling lawsuits against each other Thursday night, one of which resulted in the union’s president being barred from encouraging police officers to violate the city's Covid-19 vaccine policy.

CHICAGO (CN) — A Cook County judge entered a temporary restraining order against the president of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police on Friday night, preventing him from publicly telling officers to refuse to enter their vaccination status in the city's online employee portal or encouraging them to refuse their superiors' orders to do so.

FOP President John Catanzara Catanzara has spent the last week doing both those things.

"Do not fill out the portal information," Catanzara said in a Tuesday YouTube video addressing police union members. "You are under no obligation to do that, other than the city's demand."

The restraining order issued by Cook County Circuit Judge Cecilia Horan is the result of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot's office and the FOP filing dueling injunction lawsuits against each other - within 15 minutes of each other, in fact - on Thursday night. It was the first round of a legal fight that both camps have spent a week preparing for.

"If the FOP is threatening litigation, I don't fear that," Lightfoot said in a Thursday press conference. "I'm a 30-plus year litigator... I am confident that we have the law and the facts on our side."

The source of the dispute is Chicago's vaccine mandate for all city employees, which was announced by Lightfoot's office in August and has a compliance deadline of Oct. 15. Catanzara has been railing against the mandate since it was announced.

The mandate stipulates that all city employees, including police officers, must either be vaccinated against Covid-19 infection or file for a religious, conscientious or medical exemption by midnight on Friday. Either way, the mandate orders that officers must also enter their vaccination status on the online city employee portal by Friday so that the city can keep track of who is and who isn't vaccinated. Those who are unvaccinated must submit to twice-weekly Covid-19 testing.

It is not a popular policy and was met by harsh criticism from Catanzara and rank-and-file police union members. In response, the city's injunction lawsuit specifically requested that FOP members be prohibited from "engaging in any concerted refusal to submit vaccination status information to the vaccination portal or otherwise refuse to comply with the city's vaccination policy."

The suit also asked for an order from the court that Catanzara publicly retract his statements encouraging insubordination against the vaccination policy, and that he refrain from further encouraging that same insubordination.

"When you have the president of the FOP telling police to defy a direct order... that amounts to civil sedition and treason," one of the city's attorneys, Mike Warner, said in a hearing Friday.

Judge Horan didn't wholly agree with this statement by Warner; instead she decided to split the difference. She said Catanzara would not be forced to publicly retract his statements, and police officers would not be barred from disobeying orders to enter their vaccination status in the employee portal - though those that did would still be subject to discipline by the police department. Catanzara is only barred from further encouraging police from disobey orders.

Initially, the mayor's office said that those officers who refused to comply with the mandate would be placed in a no-pay, non-disciplinary status equivalent to non-disciplinary suspension. The city sharpened its position after Catanzara's video remarks on Tuesday, with CPD First Deputy Superintendent Eric Carter stating in the Thursday press conference that officers who defied the mandate could face consequences up to termination.

Catanzara only doubled down on his position after this announcement, telling officers to defy orders to fill out the portal information even if they came from their direct superiors.

"The new thing seems to be that [the CPD] is going to have supervisors give direct orders to enter information in the portal. I am telling you right now, it is an improper order... refuse that order," Catanzara said Thursday. "Get it on body cam. Whether it's from a sergeant, a lieutenant, a captain... I don't care if it's Superintendent [David] Brown. If somebody orders you to go into the portal, refuse that order."

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Throughout this feud between the city and FOP, Catanzara threatened that should police be forced to choose between compulsory vaccination and walking off the job on a no-pay status, close to half would choose the no-pay status. This, the city's lawsuit against him and the FOP states, constitutes an attempt to instigate an illegal strike. The FOP's contract with the city includes a no-strike pledge.

"This instruction to all FOP members to collectively violate the city's lawful vaccine policy amounts to an unlawful strike and work stoppage and exposes the City to an untenable risk of irreparable harm that this court should enjoin," Chicago's lawsuit against the FOP states.

Catanzara has insisted since Tuesday that he never encouraged police officers to strike, only that they should go home if they are put on a no-pay status for refusing to enter their status into the employee portal. In her Thursday press conference, Lightfoot dismissed this position as being no different from encouraging a strike, a view which the city's lawsuit reiterates.

"FOP bargaining members, by following Catanzara's directive to not report their vaccination status to the city's vaccination portal, are engaging in an unlawful strike and work stoppage," the complaint states.

Answering this injunction lawsuit, Catanzara and the FOP filed their own complaint against the city on Thursday night, claiming the vaccine mandate was always an illegal violation of Chicago's collective bargaining agreement with the four police unions operating under the FOP umbrella.

"The 'finalized' Covid-19 vaccination and testing policy... imposes several new terms and conditions of employment that the city did not reach an agreement over with its claimed 'labor partners,'" the FOP lawsuit states, arguing that alternatives to a vaccine mandate that the FOP suggested to the city on Oct. 8 were wholly ignored.

The legal fight spilled over into Friday morning, when the FOP filed a motion with Cook County Circuit Court to dismiss the city's injunction. The motion states that, if the city believes an essential service union is about to strike, the Illinois Labor Relations Board must conduct an independent investigation to determine whether such a strike would present a "clear and present danger to the health and safety of the public" before the city can file for injunctive relief against the strike.

As the city's lawsuit doesn't state that it contacted the Labor Relations Board to begin an investigation, the motion argues, the court lacks jurisdiction to rule on the matter. The motion also points out, as Catanzara himself did on Tuesday, that a separate allegation by the FOP against the city for unfair labor practices has already been filed with the Board.

In the meantime, though Chicago's vaccine policy is officially in effect, city attorney Celia Meza said it would take the city at least until Tuesday to figure out who was in compliance with that policy and who wasn't over the weekend. Accordingly, she said, police would remain on duty - and get paid - through Monday at least.

Judge Horan said she hopes that the FOP and the city's attorneys would meet over the weekend to see if a more equitable resolution to this conflict can be reached. Another hearing on the matter is scheduled for Oct. 25.

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Categories / Employment, Government, Health, Regional

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