Courts have been botching 1905 precedent upholding mandate for vaccine that actually stops transmission since Buck v. Bell, which upheld forced sterilization of “imbeciles,” and especially in COVID era, SCOTUS hears.
Whenever COVID-19 vaccine mandates were legally challenged, public entities were likely to invoke a 1905 Supreme Court precedent upholding a $5 fine on a Massachusetts man for violating a local smallpox vaccination ordinance. Invented a century earlier, the vaccine allegedly has a 95% effective rate against infection.
An advocacy group that fights “unwanted medical treatments” is asking the high court to take a fresh look at the case, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, and how courts have interpreted it – extrapolating the holding far beyond the facts of the case – and getting an assist from several red states and a public interest law firm that seeks to rein in the administrative state.
Last week, the justices considered whether to accept Health Freedom Defense Fund’s petition to review a ruling by the full 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, overturning a three-judge panel that said it’s irrelevant whether COVID vaccines stop infection or transmission for the purposes of Los Angeles Unified School District’s onetime employee mandate.
They didn’t make a decision at that time, and the petition has received little attention.
The school district was one of the strictest in the country on COVID mitigation, even requiring students and employees returning to in-person learning in fall 2021 to get tested weekly for SARS-CoV-2 regardless of COVID vaccination. A mother also accused the district of inoculating her son without her consent by offering him free pizza.
It’s not the first SCOTUS petition to ask for a review of Jacobson in light of COVID vaccine mandates. While he was still a presidential candidate, future Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s Children’s Health Defense tried to get Rutgers University’s mandate on students before the high court.