The Los Angeles Times reports that Thousands of people gathered outside Los Angeles City Hall to protest COVID-19 vaccination mandates on Monday – the day the city began enforcing some of the nation’s strictest vaccination verification rules for businesses.

L.A. now requires proof of full COVID-19 vaccination to enter indoor restaurants, shopping centers, movie theaters, hair and nail salons, gyms, museums, bowling alleys, performance venues and other spaces.

Already faced with at least two lawsuits over its coronavirus-related student vaccination mandate, the Los Angeles Unified School District is now being sued over a similar requirement for employees to get their COVID-19 shots.

According to the report in Daily News, Health Freedom Defense Fund, a Wyoming-based organization that advocates against mandatory masking, testing and vaccinations, and six LAUSD employees filed a lawsuit against the district last week, challenging L.A. Unified’s staff vaccination mandate.

California Educators for Medical Freedom, founded by LAUSD employees opposed to a vaccine mandate, was inadvertently left off as a plaintiff, but the complaint will be amended to include the group, Leslie Manookian, founder and president of Health Freedom Defense Fund, said on Monday, Nov. 8.

Filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the complaint names as defendants Megan Reilly, the district’s interim superintendent; Ileana Davalos, chief human resources officer; and all seven school board members.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs challenged the need for the COVID-19 vaccines, stating in the complaint that they do not prevent infections or transmission of the coronavirus, and that their effectiveness wanes after several months. The complaint also states that the vaccination mandate violates an individual’s right to “personal autonomy, self-determination, bodily integrity and the right to reject medical treatment,” as provided by the Fourteenth Amendment.

“That’s what LAUSD is doing to these teachers and staff at this school district,” she added. “They are forcing them to make a choice between caring for their families and a medical intervention they don’t want.”

Employees who did not meet a mid-October deadline for providing proof of having received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine were prohibited from reporting to work in person. Some were provided accommodations, including being reassigned to a remote position, but not everyone who sought an exemption were granted one. Even if an exemption was granted, not everyone received a workplace accommodation, as was the case for most of the six employees named as plaintiffs in this lawsuit, according to the complaint.

As part of its vaccination mandate, LAUSD agreed to pay unvaccinated employees impacted by the mandate through Oct. 31. It could have begun firing employees starting Nov. 1, though it’s also possible some employees are using their “benefitted time” or have been placed on leave.

The district is requiring students 12 and older to receive their first vaccine dose by Nov. 21 and the second by Dec. 19, before second semester starts in January.

LAUSD has been hit with at least two lawsuits over its student mandate. Attorneys for one of the suits, filed by the California chapter of Children’s Health Defense and the Protection of the Educational Rights of Kids, submitted a motion this week seeking a preliminary injunction to halt LAUSD’s student mandate.