A federal appeals court has partially reversed a lower court ruling in a case involving a student who was arrested for not receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.

A U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit panel on July 18 said that Mount St. Joseph University, a Catholic university in Ohio, may have violated the student’s constitutional rights by detaining him in 2021.

Matthew Warman, the student, “had not committed any crime, was not suspected to have committed any crime, and had not even violated the university’s vaccine policy at that time,” so the arresting officers lacked probable cause, U.S. Circuit Judge R. Guy Cole Jr. wrote for the unanimous panel. “Thus, he plausibly established a denial of his Fourth Amendment rights.”

Warman, a veteran of the Marines, enrolled at Mount St. Joseph University in 2020. The school in the fall of 2021 imposed a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Warman filed for a religious exemption, which was denied.

Soon after, according to court documents, two officers with the school’s police department detained Warman at the police station on campus for about an hour. They disparaged his religion and tried to convince him to take a vaccine.

Warman was later told by a school official to get vaccinated. The official said Warman was morally obligated to receive a vaccine, referring to how Pope Francis had endorsed vaccination.

Warman appealed the denial of the exemption request, and the appeal was rejected.

Warman was unable to complete his studies at the university and sued it, alleging that school officials and police violated his constitutional rights, including his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Black in 2024 threw out Warman’s lawsuit, reasoning in part that Warman had not shown that the police seized him.

“Plaintiff alleges that he felt that he was not free to leave. And the facts as pled suggest that [the officers] were trying to bully Plaintiff into getting a vaccine. But the test for whether a seizure occurs is whether, in view of all the circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to leave. And given the circumstances alleged in the [complaint], a reasonable person would believe that he was free to leave,” Black wrote.

The appeals court upheld the dismissal of most claims, including violation of Warman’s right to equal protection. But it said that the evidence supported the Fourth Amendment claim.

While Warman went to the police station voluntarily, police told him after he went there that he was not free to leave until a school official arrived. The Sixth Circuit has previously held that when police direct an individual to remain, then a reasonable person would not feel free to leave.

“Since a reasonable person would not feel free to leave when directed by police to remain, Warman was seized for Fourth Amendment purposes,” Cole said.

The officers’ hostile language and tone, including swearing, also were grounds for reviving the case, according to the circuit court.

The case was remanded back to the district court to proceed in line with the new ruling.

Lawyers for Warman and the university did not return requests for comment by publication time.