The US has a history of protecting public health
No, COVID-19 vaccine mandates don’t violate your Constitutional rights. In fact, they’re as American as apple pie.
Vaccines are one of the greatest achievements of modern medicine. In the past 100 years, vaccines have eliminated numerous deadly diseases, including smallpox, measles and polio. Today, widespread vaccination is our best chance of ending the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed 8,447 Connecticut residents. Unfortunately, the anti-vaccine movement, which has grown exponentially throughout the pandemic, is causing a rise in vaccine hesitancy and is setting our nation back in its fight against COVID-19.
According to the Mayo Clinic’s COVID-19 vaccine tracker, Connecticut has the second-highest vaccination rate in the United States, with 67.5% of the population fully vaccinated as of
Sept. 17. However, Connecticut’s anti-vaccine movement is alive and well. Earlier this year, thousands protested as state lawmakers repealed Connecticut’s religious exemption for mandatory school vaccinations. Furthermore, organizations like Connecticut Liberty Rally and Unmask Our Kids CT are fighting tooth and nail against
COVID-19 mandates. Members of these groups fervently believe that mandating vaccines is a violation of their constitutional rights, and their Telegram channels are devoted to preventing vaccine mandates and vaccine passports in Connecticut. Moreover, these groups organized the “CT Freedom Rally” at the state Capitol to protest vaccine mandates and other public health measures.
Contrary to the beliefs of anti-vaccine protesters, vaccine mandates do not violate your constitutional rights. In fact, there is ample historical and legal precedent for vaccine mandates in the United States.
The constitutional basis for vaccine requirements stems from the police powers of the states. Police power is best defined as the authority delegated to the states under the 10th Amendment to the Constitution. In Gibbons v. Ogden, the Supreme Court described police power as an “immense mass of legislation” that includes “health laws of every description.” According to the court’s opinion in the Slaughter-House Cases, police power is preeminent because the “security of social order, [and] … the life and health of the citizen” depends upon it.
Jacobson v. Massachusetts is one of two landmark Supreme Court decisions regarding states’ authority to implement mandatory vaccination programs. At the beginning of the 20 century, Boston experienced a major smallpox outbreak that resulted in 1,596 cases and 270 deaths. To control the spread of disease, the Cambridge Board of Health used the power granted to it under Massachusetts state law to impose a vaccine mandate. Six individuals were prosecuted for refusing to get vaccinated, including Swedish Lutheran minister Henning Jacobson. Although doctors considered smallpox vaccination to be medically safe, Jacobson refused because he allegedly experienced an adverse reaction to a childhood vaccine. With the help of prominent lawyers selected by the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination Society, Jacobson appealed the case to the Supreme Court.
The arguments that Jacobson’s legal team presented to the Supreme Court bear a remarkable resemblance to the objections proffered by Connecticut anti-vaxers. When making their case, Jacobson’s legal team argued that vaccination was dangerous and that Massachusetts’ mandatory vaccination law was “unreasonable, arbitrary, and oppressive.” They also claimed that compulsory vaccination was “hostile to the inherent right of every freeman to care for his own body and health in such way as to him seems best” and that the enforcement of said law was “nothing short of an assault upon his person.”
The Supreme Court’s decision in Jacobson upheld the right of states to compel vaccination. Although the court acknowledged that there are spaces where an individual might “assert the supremacy of his own will, and rightfully dispute the authority of any human government … to interfere with the exercise of that will,” they expressly rejected the notion of vaccine exemptions based on personal choice. Specifically, the court held that states and local communities have the right to protect themselves from epidemics of disease that threaten the safety of their members. According to the majority opinion in Jacobson, “the liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint.”