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Elijah Behringer v. California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, et al.

IFP petition · United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, No. 23-4162 · judgment July 21, 2025


Certiorari denied · February 23, 2026

Question presented

  1. Whether this Court’s decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905) provides authority for automatic dismissal of lawsuits challenging the enforcement of COVID-19 mandates or similar emergency-decreed “public health” mandates without holding trial by jury.

  2. Whether the doctrine of “substantive” due process and its corresponding “rational basis review” and “tiered scrutiny” jurisprudence should be overruled or cabined-off as a matter of law.

  3. Whether the common-law preservation of the right to trial by jury embodied in the Sixth and Seventh Amendments safeguards a jury prerogative to pass judgment not only on the facts, but also on the law to be applied in a given case before it.

Counsel of record

For petitioner
Elijah Behringer

For respondent
Jacob Canter
Crowell & Moring LLP

Case

Conference history
Distributed for 1 conference

Proceedings

  1. Feb 23 2026
    Petition DENIED.
  2. Feb 05 2026
    DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 2/20/2026.
  3. Jan 06 2026
    Waiver of right of respondents Board of Trustees of the California State University; President Jeffrey Armstrong; Tina Hadaway-Mells; Valla Hardy; Amy Gode to respond filed.
  4. Nov 25 2025
    Petition for a writ of certiorari and motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis filed. (Response due January 30, 2026)