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."