The board ordered back pay and expunged records - the appeals court reversed it all
An Illinois appeals court on June 26, 2026, handed Chicago a win over its COVID vaccine mandate, overturning a labor board ruling.
For HR and labor-relations leaders, the decision is worth a close read - not for the vaccine politics, but for what it says about running a policy through two legal channels at once.
Back in August 2021, the City of Chicago told all city employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19 or test twice a week on their own dime. Anyone who failed to report their status by October 15, 2021, or get vaccinated by December 31, 2021, would land in nondisciplinary, no-pay status.
The city said it could put the policy in place on its own under its union contracts, while still discussing the effects. The police unions saw it differently. They argued the policy and its effects both had to be bargained, and they sent the city twelve requests for documents and information.
Talks did not produce a delay, so the city implemented the policy on October 8, 2021. The unions hit back on two tracks. They filed an unfair labor practice charge on October 13, 2021, and grievances the next day.
The grievance track is where the case turned. After a four-day hearing, an arbitrator denied the grievances and found the mandate a reasonable use of the city's management rights. He set fresh vaccination deadlines and, over the following 18 months, issued four more awards sorting out discipline, exemptions, pay status, and reinstatement - largely because the unions kept coming back to him with those questions.
The labor board went the other way. An administrative law judge concluded in May 2024 that the city violated state labor law by implementing the policy without bargaining seven separate effects, from consequences for noncompliance and the start date to paid time off, injury-on-duty status, medical-expense coverage, testing costs, and vaccination incentives. In November 2024, the Illinois Labor Relations Board adopted that finding in full and ordered the city to make members whole - rescind the policy, expunge records, reinstate terminated employees, and pay back pay with interest.
The appellate court reversed. Its reasoning: the grievance and the unfair labor practice charge came down to the same question, and the arbitrator had already decided it. Since the unions repeatedly brought effects issues to him and won relief, the board should have deferred to his awards instead of redoing the work. Declining to defer was an abuse of discretion.
The court also tossed the information-request finding as clear error. The city answered all twelve requests within a week, supplemented days later, and the unions never complained that the responses were late or incomplete.
The practical lesson is about forum and process. Run grievance arbitration and an unfair labor practice charge side by side over one dispute, and the place where the parties actually litigate can become the one that governs. Take every effects question to an arbitrator and live with the rulings, and those outcomes can stick. The court was also clear that urgency cuts both ways: in a genuine emergency, the neat split between a policy and its effects may not hold, and the standard "decide, then bargain the effects" approach gets harder to run.
