Back in 2021, COVID-19 vaccines were becoming widely available, and we saw the likelihood of vaccine mandates on the horizon.  We researched the legal implications, and it didn’t take us long to figure out that Jacobson v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905), is the 500-pound gorilla precedent in this area.  An anti-vaxxer in Jacobson claimed that Due Process precluded him from being prosecuted for violating a municipal mandatory smallpox vaccination order.  He lost:

[T]he liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States to every person within its jurisdiction does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint.  There are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good.  On any other basis organized society could not exist with safety to its members.  Society based on the rule that each one is a law unto himself would soon be confronted with disorder and anarchy.

197 U.S. at 26 (emphasis added).

But the Jacobson gorilla is a silverback – decided well over a century ago at a time when “Due Process” often meant something much different than it does today (Jacobson was decided in the same term as Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905)).  Thus we devoted our “Survival of the Vaxxest” post to marshalling all of the precedent that had followed Jacobson during those 116 years, including several more recent Supreme Court decisions:  Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, 888-89 (1990); Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 166-67 (1944); Zucht v. King, 260 U.S. 174, 176 (1922), see South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, ___ U.S. ___, 140 S. Ct. 1613, 1613-14 (2020) (Roberts, C.J. concurring in denial of certiorari).  We did that so that those defending vaccination requirements wouldn’t have to, since they might not have the kind of resources that we, as big-firm lawyers, do.

It is now over four years later.  How well did Jacobson weather the COVID-19 storm?

As this post demonstrates, pretty well.

The recent decision by the en banc Ninth Circuit in Health Freedom Defense Fund, Inc. v. Carvalho, ___ F.4th ___, 2025 WL 2167401 (9th Cir. July 31, 2025), affirming a California city’s vaccination mandate for employees by a hefty 8-2 margin (with one other judge finding the case moot) is as good a place to start as any.  Health Freedom was a relatively “clean” case, in that the only issues left were “Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process and equal protection claims.”  Id. at *3.  All of the weird claims that anti-vaxxer plaintiffs tended to throw into such litigation had fallen by the wayside.  Their weird factual allegations remained, however:

Plaintiffs allege that the Policy violates their fundamental right to bodily integrity in refusing medical treatment, as the vaccines are therapeutic treatments for COVID and not vaccines at all.  According to Plaintiffs, COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission of COVID-19.  Instead, the vaccines only reduce symptoms of those who are infected by COVID, and thus they are medical treatments and not traditional vaccines.

Health Freedom, 2025 WL 2167401, at *3.  Through these allegations, plaintiffs sought to avoid taking Jacobson on frontally, and instead tried to salami-slice what “vaccination” was.  That worked with a luck-of-the-draw appellate panel which accepted those supposed facts as “true,” id. at *4, but got only two votes en banc.

The 8-judge majority held that Jacobson applied, refused to create factual distinctions between this, or that, vaccine, and affirmed the municipal employee vaccination requirement under “rational basis” review.

Jacobson holds that the constitutionality of a vaccine mandate, like the Policy here, turns on what reasonable legislative and executive decisionmakers could have rationally concluded about whether a vaccine protects the public’s health and safety, not whether a vaccine actually provides immunity to or prevents transmission of a disease.  Whether a vaccine protects the public’s health and safety is committed to policymakers, not a court or a jury.  Further, alleged scientific uncertainty over a vaccine’s efficacy is irrelevant under Jacobson.  Jacobson simply does not allow debate in the courts over whether a mandated vaccine prevents the spread of disease.  Jacobson makes clear that it is up to the political branches, within the parameters of rational basis review, to decide whether a vaccine effectively protects public health and safety.  Jacobson is materially indistinguishable from this case. Here, as in Jacobson, we are presented with a bodily integrity substantive due process challenge to a vaccine mandate imposed to protect the public’s health and safety in response to a health emergency.  Thus, under Jacobson, we must apply rational basis review.

Id. at *8 (emphasis added).

Health Freedom also made our job easier, 2025 WL 2167401, at *7, by collecting COVID-19-related federal circuit court precedent.  “Like all our sister circuits that have considered substantive due process challenges to COVID-19 vaccine mandates, we hold that Jacobson controls our analysis.”  Id. at *7.  Here are the appellate decisions Health Freedom lists:

• Brox v. The Woods Hole, 83 F.4th 87, 100-01 (1st Cir. 2023) (applying Jacobson’s rational basis test to a due process challenge to a COVID-19 vaccination mandate and holding that the mandate easily satisfied rational basis review).
• We The Patriots USA, Inc. v. Hochul, 17 F.4th 266, 293-94 (2d Cir. 2021) (per curiam) (rejecting claim that Jacobson had been impliedly overruled and applying Jacobson to plaintiffs’ claim that a COVID-19 vaccine mandate “violate[d] their fundamental rights to privacy, medical freedom, and bodily autonomy under the Fourteenth Amendment”), clarified, 17 F.4th 368 (2d Cir. 2021) (discussed here).
• Children’s Health Defense, Inc. v. Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 93 F.4th 66, 78, 80 (3d Cir. 2024) (holding that “Jacobson control[led],” plaintiffs’ claim that a COVID-19 vaccine mandate “violated their substantive due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment”) (discussed here).
• Antunes v. Becerra, 2024 WL 511038, at *1 (4th Cir. Feb. 9, 2024) (per curiam) (adopting the district court’s decision in Antunes v. Rector & Visitors of University of Virginia, 627 F. Supp.3d 553, 564-65 (W.D. Va. 2022), which applied Jacobson in rejecting plaintiff’s claim that a COVID-19 vaccine mandate violated her due process right to refuse unwanted medical treatment).
• Norris v. Stanley, 73 F.4th 431, 435 (6th Cir. 2023) (applying Jacobson to plaintiffs’ substantive due process challenge to a COVID-19 vaccine mandate).
• Klaassen v. Trustees of Indiana University, 7 F.4th 592, 593 (7th Cir. 2021) (holding that, because the court “must apply the law established by the Supreme Court,” Jacobson applied to plaintiffs’ substantive due process claim challenging a COVID-19 vaccine mandate) (discussed here).

Not surprisingly, Health Freedom found that the municipal vaccine mandate “easily survives [rational basis] review because (even assuming the truth of Plaintiffs’ allegations) it was more than reasonable for the [defendant] to conclude that COVID-19 vaccines would protect the health and safety of its employees and students.”  2025 WL 2167401, at *8.  The decision also strongly rejected the plaintiffs’ salami slicing about different vaccine types and functions:

We reject Plaintiffs’ attempt to limit Jacobson to only those vaccines that prevent the spread of a disease and provide immunity.  Jacobson required no such findings.  The Court dealt with arguments very similar to Plaintiffs’ about the nature of vaccines, including through offers of proof made by Jacobson on which he sought to introduce expert testimony.  [extensive quote from Jacobson omitted]  [T]he Court determined that Jacobson’s claims about the smallpox vaccine − very similar to Plaintiffs’ claims − were immaterial, given the other evidence from which the legislature could have reasonably concluded that the vaccine would likely protect the health and safety of the public.  Jacobson thus applies to vaccination requirements regardless of whether such vaccines actually provide immunity and prevent the spread of disease or whether they provide no immunity and merely render COVID-19 less dangerous to those who contract it, so long as policymakers could reasonably conclude that the vaccines would protect the public’s health and safety.

2025 WL 2167401, at *8-9 (footnotes omitted).

We thought it likely that Health Freedom pretty well covered the waterfront on recent vaccine mandate decisions following Jacobson in the federal courts of appeals.  But we did look and found some more decisions following Jacobson in vaccination cases that are worth mentioning in what we intend to be a comprehensive post.  See Miller v. McDonald, 130 F.4th 258, 265 (2d Cir. 2025) (courts “have consistently viewed immunization laws with approval”; “[t]his Court has repeatedly upheld neutral and generally applicable immunization laws”); Cuttler v. Allegheny County, 2025 WL 1719959, at *1 (3d Cir. June 20, 2025) (“the right at issue here is the right to refuse a vaccine, which the Supreme Court recognized in Jacobson . . ., does not implicate a fundamental right”); Spivack v. City of Philadelphia, 109 F.4th 158, 177 n.15 (3d Cir. 2024) (reaching “conclusion align[ed] with Jacobson . . . that a vaccine mandate with only a limited medical exemption was constitutional”); Wilkins v. Herron, 2024 WL 5200177, at *3 (9th Cir. Dec. 23, 2024) (“there was no clearly established due process right to refuse a vaccine . . . during a pandemic.  To the contrary, Jacobson . . ., had upheld a government vaccine mandate”; “since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous courts have rejected claims that COVID-19 vaccine mandates . . . violate individuals’ substantive due process rights”) (footnotes omitted); We The Patriots USA, Inc. v. Connecticut Office of Early Childhood Development, 76 F.4th 130, 157 (2d Cir. 2023) (“for more than a century, courts have consistently rejected the notion that there is a fundamental right ingrained in the American legal tradition to avoid vaccination”); Clementine Co., LLC v. Adams, 74 F.4th 77, 84 (2d Cir. 2023) (“Jacobson, which remains good law, instructs us to uphold governmental measures to protect public health unless they bear no real or substantial relation to the object of public health); Bellatoni v. Lamont, 2023 WL 8889516, at *1 (2d Cir. Dec. 26, 2023) (“We have never held that, in the face of a public health emergency, the Constitution forbids vaccine mandates,” rather “weighing scientific evidence and the effectiveness of vaccines is the role of state policymakers, not Plaintiffs”); Clark v. Jackson, 2023 WL 2787325, at *6 (6th Cir. April 5, 2023) (“Following Jacobson, federal courts have consistently held that vaccine mandates do not implicate a fundamental right and have applied rational basis review.”) (citation and quotation marks omitted); Lukaszczyk v. Cook County, 47 F.4th 587, 603 (7th Cir. 2022) (“plaintiffs have not met their burden under the rational basis standard to show that the challenged [vaccination] policies violate their substantive due process rights.”); Goe v. Zucker, 43 F.4th 19, 31-32 (2d Cir. 2022) (“no court appears ever to have held that Jacobson requires that strict scrutiny be applied to immunization mandates”; “courts have consistently rejected substantive due process challenges to vaccination requirements without applying strict scrutiny”) (citation and quotation marks omitted); Kheriaty v. Regents of the University of California, 2022 WL 17175070, at *1 (9th Cir. Nov. 23, 2022) (plaintiff “fails to offer any appropriate historical example to establish a ‘fundamental right’ to be free from a vaccine mandate at a workplace”); Florida v. Dep’t of Health & Human Services, 19 F.4th 1271, 1288 (11th Cir. 2021) (“healthcare workers have long been required to obtain inoculations  . . . because required vaccination is a common-sense measure designed to prevent healthcare workers, whose job it is to improve patients’ health, from making them sicker.  Indeed, mandatory vaccinations for the public at large have long been held valid.”); BST Holdings, L.L.C. v. OSHA, United States Dep’t of Labor, 17 F.4th 604, 617 (5th Cir. 2021) (“to mandate that a person receive a vaccine . . . falls squarely within the States’ police power”).

State appellate decisions during the pandemic have also continued to follow Jacobson.  Jacobson “has long provided a framework applicable in the context of a public health crisis.”  Bentonville School District v. Sitton, 643 S.W.3d 763, 770 (Ark. 2022).  The North Carolina Supreme Court held:

Courts across the United States have overwhelmingly held that the fundamental right to refuse medical treatment does not imply a fundamental right to disregard a vaccine mandate.  Litigants in these cases frequently attempt to invoke [a] broad right “to refuse medical treatment”. . . .  But courts instead continue to look to the Supreme Court’s much older decision in Jacobson . . ., which sustained a criminal conviction for refusing a smallpox vaccine. . . .  These courts reiterate Jacobson’s acknowledgement that “[t]here are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good,” including a community’s “right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members.”

Happel v. Guilford County Board of Education, 913 S.E.2d 174, 186-87 (N.C. 2025).  Happel allowed a limited suit over allegations of  “nonmandated” vaccination – that certain defendants took actions that exceeded the particular mandate in that case, id. at 187-88 – but only after acknowledging Jacobson’s holding that no constitutional impediment to the mandate itself existed.

Spillane v. Lamont, 323 A.3d 1007 (Conn. 2024), relied on Jacobson to reject a challenge to Connecticut’s elimination of religious exemptions to that state’s school vaccination mandates.

Jacobson settled that it is within the police power of a state to provide for compulsory vaccination.  Although Jacobson was decided before the free exercise clause was held to apply to the states, . . . a parent cannot claim freedom from compulsory vaccination for the child more than for himself on religious grounds. The right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or the child to communicable disease or the latter to ill health or death.

Id. at 1028-29 (citations and quotation marks omitted).

The Maine Supreme Court followed Jacobson in rejecting a parent’s due process arguments concerning the operation of that state’s mandatory vaccination program in the Hogan v. Lincoln Medical Partners, 331 A.3d 463 (Me. 2025), PREP Act case. 

[Plaintiff] contends that the immunity provision is, as applied, inconsistent with constitutional principles of due process. . . .  [T]he federal government has a compelling interest in legislating to address public health emergencies. . . .  [I]n the context of COVID-19, courts across the country have concluded that Jacobson established that there is no fundamental right to refuse vaccination.

Id. at 469 n.3 (citations and quotation marks omitted).  Accord Stand Up Montana v. Missoula County Public Schools, 539 P.3d 1117, 1124 (Mont. 2023) (“Consistent with Jacobson . . . the District Court properly granted the School Districts’ summary judgment on Appellants’ substantive due process claim.”); Amadeo Ocasio v. Pierluisi Urrutia, 211 D.P.R. 278, 296 (P.R. Feb. 16, 2023) (“Since Jacobson . . . , it has been firmly established that states have discretion to require vaccination of their citizens in the interest of public health.  We have also recognized that a State may pass laws compulsorily requiring certain vaccinations in response to the threat of an epidemic.”) (concurring opinion to mootness ruling).

A Missouri intermediate appellate court similarly applied Jacobson to reject the same sort of claim:

In the exercise of its police powers, the state legislature may enact laws to protect the health and safety of its citizens.  Long ago, the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of state compulsory vaccination laws.  This includes compulsory vaccination laws for children attending school. . . .  Thus, a state is not constitutionally required to provide an exemption to mandatory vaccination laws for parents who object to the law’s requirements on religious grounds.

Baker v. Crossroads Academy-Central Street, 648 S.W.3d 790, 803 (Mo. App. 2022) (citations omitted), transfer denied (Mo. Aug. 30, 2022).

New Jersey’s Appellate Division did the same, recognizing that:

[I]n Jacobson . . . [t]he Court recognized that the effectiveness of one approach to an emergency rather than another is no part of the function” of our courts. . . .  Considering this highly deferential approach, it should be unsurprising that recently many courts, including this court, have declined to intervene or modify vaccination mandates because of an obvious and indisputable fact:  vaccination mandates are a rational and permissible way to halt or limit the spread of the virus.

New Jersey State Policemen’s Benevolent Ass’n v. Murphy, 271 A.3d 333, 343 (N.J. Super. App. Div. 2022) (citations omitted).  See Matter of City of Newark, 264 A.3d 318, 325 (N.J. Super. App. Div. 2021) (“When a public health emergency exists, governmental entities, including local authorities, have a recognized right to require vaccinations.”).

In the context of a private employer requiring vaccination, a California intermediate appellate court relied on Jacobson in Sexton v. Apple Studios LLC, 331 Cal. Rptr.3d 337, 348 (Cal. App. 2025) (discussed here).  Strict scrutiny of was not required:

Our task is to review [defendant’s] safety measures to see if they were “reasonable under the circumstances.”  They were.  A consensus of scientific opinion supported mandatory vaccination.  Public health officials recommended vaccinations.  [Plaintiff’s own] union wanted a mandatory vaccination. . . .  Compulsory immunization has long been recognized as the gold standard for preventing the spread of contagious diseases. . . .  [Plaintiff] incorrectly advocates strict scrutiny of [defendant’s] policy.

Id. at 354 (citations and quotation marks omitted).  See also Free Oregon, Inc. v. Oregon Health Auth., 541 P.3d 897, 904 (Or. App. 2023) (“vaccines long have played a role in controlling communicable diseases in the United States and, in addition, it has long been recognized that states have the police-power authority to impose vaccine requirements when health officials determine such requirements are necessary to protect the public health or public safety”); Larson v. Minnesota State College Southeast – Winona, 2023 WL 193984, at *4 (Minn. App. Jan. 17, 2023) (citing Jacobson for the proposition that “it is not the role of this court to weigh these studies against the public-health expertise of the [agencies] upon which the COVID-19 policy was based”); E.E.B. v. E.K., 2022 WL 17172068, at *2 (Kan. App. Nov. 23, 2022) (“The government . . . may otherwise act for the public good in ways that curtail or override some parenting decisions.  Those governmental intrusions include . . . compulsory vaccination laws”) (in table at 519 P.3d 1240); County of Allegheny v. Cracked Egg, LLC, 2021 WL 3124248, at *9 (Pa. Commw. July 23, 2021) (“[N]umerous courts have held, as the trial court did here, that Jacobson’s standard was the same as the current rational basis standard.  Thus, those courts applied the Jacobson standard to Fourteenth Amendment challenges that did not involve a suspect class or fundamental right, like the challenge here.”) (in table at 260 A.3d 1105) (citation and quotation marks omitted).

There are literally scores of federal district courts from all over the country that recognized that Jacobson meant that COVID-19 vaccine mandates were constitutional under the Due Process Clause.  Since many of these cases are in circuits with controlling appellate authority that Jacobson precludes Due Process challenges to vaccination mandates, we’re just listing those.  We only provide quotations for decisions from circuits without such binding appellate precedent – but we remind you that our prior post has additional, older authority.

First Circuit:  Bazinet v. Beth Israel Lahey Health, Inc., 2023 WL 9687614, at *6 (D. Mass. Dec. 22, 2023), vacated on other grounds, 113 F.4th 9 (1st Cir. 2024); Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union v. Baker, 630 F. Supp.3d 249, 254-55 (D. Mass. 2022); Dr. T. v. Alexander-Scott, 579 F. Supp.3d 271, 280 (D.R.I. 2022); Bush v. Fantasia, 2022 WL 4134501, at *6-7 (D. Mass. Sept. 12, 2022), aff’d, 2024 WL 4234950 (1st Cir. April 18, 2024); Tropical Chill Corp. v. Pierluisi Urrutia, 2022 WL 2374976, at *10-12 (Mag. D.P.R. Jan. 17, 2022), adopted, 2022 WL 2712538 (D.P.R. July 13, 2022); Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union v. Baker, 567 F. Supp.3d 315, 324-25 (D. Mass. 2021); Does 1-6 v. Mills, 566 F. Supp.3d 34, 45-46 & n.12 (D. Me. 2021), aff’d, 16 F.4th 20 (1st Cir. 2021); Harris v. University of Massachusetts, Lowell, 557 F. Supp.3d 304, 312-14 (D. Mass. 2021); Rodriguez-Velez v. Pierluisi-Urrutia, 2021 WL 5072017, at *6-7 (D.P.R. Nov. 1, 2021); Dr. T. v. Alexander-Scott, 2021 WL 4476784, at *2 (D.R.I. Sept. 30, 2021).

Second Circuit:  Pastrana v. New York City Fire Dept., 2025 WL 2200387, at *3 (E.D.N.Y. Aug. 1, 2025); Fugelsang v. Dept. of Education, 2025 WL 974276, at *6 (E.D.N.Y. March 31, 2025); Coombs-Moreno v. City of New York, 2024 WL 4287247, at *6 (E.D.N.Y. Sept. 25, 2024”), reconsideration granted on other grounds, 2025 WL 917826 (E.D.N.Y. March 25, 2025); Sutton v. Adams, 2024 WL 2137966, at *3 (S.D.N.Y. May 13, 2024); Bellatoni v. Lamont, 671 F. Supp.3d 140, 145 (D. Conn. 2023); Milford Christian Church v. Russell-Tucker, 2023 WL 8358016, at *13, 16 (D. Conn. Dec. 1, 2023); Ibekweh v. Ascend Learning, Inc., 2023 WL 6292526, at *3 & n.4 (E.D.N.Y. Sept. 27, 2023); Peralta v. New York City Dept. of Education, 2023 WL 6201507, at *5 & n.11 (E.D.N.Y. Sept. 22, 2023); Evans v. New York City Health & Hospitals Corp., 2023 WL 5920189, at *5 (Mag. S.D.N.Y. Aug. 7, 2023), adopted, 2023 WL 5561145 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 29, 2023); Strong v. Zucker, 676 F. Supp.3d 189, 193-194 (W.D.N.Y. 2022); Does 1-2 v. Hochul, 632 F. Supp.3d 120, 134-35 (E.D.N.Y. 2022), aff’d in pertinent part, 2024 WL 5182675 (2d Cir. Dec. 20, 2024); Andre-Rodney v. Hochul, 618 F. Supp.3d 72, 82-83 (N.D.N.Y. 2022); Marciano v. de Blasio, 589 F. Supp.3d 423, 435 (S.D.N.Y. 2022); Evans v. New York City Health & Hospitals Corp., 2022 WL 18587777, at *4 (Mag. S.D.N.Y. Nov. 28, 2022), adopted, 2023 WL 580527 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 27, 2023); Commey v. Adams, 2022 WL 3286548, at *4-5 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 11, 2022); Iosilevich v. City of New York, 2022 WL 19272855, at *4 (E.D.N.Y. Aug. 10, 2022); Guettlein v. United States Merchant Marine Academy, 577 F. Supp.3d 96, 105 (E.D.N.Y. 2021); Andre-Rodney v. Hochul, 569 F. Supp.3d 128, 137-39 (N.D.N.Y. 2021); Maniscalco v. New York City Dept. of Education, 563 F. Supp.3d 33, 39-40 (E.D.N.Y. 2021), aff’d, 2021 WL 4814767 (2d Cir. Oct. 15, 2021) (on the district court’s opinion); Butler v. City of New York, 559 F. Supp.3d 253, 265-66 (S.D.N.Y. 2021); Abadi v. City of New York, 2022 WL 347632, at *9-10 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 4, 2022); Hogue v. Scott, 2021 WL 6050864, at *4 (D. Vt. Dec. 21, 2021); Geller v. Hochul, 2021 WL 4392521, at *8-9 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 24, 2021), aff’d in pertinent part, 2023 WL 221725 (2d Cir. Jan. 18, 2023).

Third Circuit:  Barone v. Allegheny County, 2025 WL 2371205, at *5 (W.D. Pa. Aug. 14, 2025); Dzibela v. BlackRock, Inc., 2024 WL 4349813, at *12 (D.N.J. Sept. 30, 2024); Shim v. Allegheny County, 2024 WL 1095811, at *2, 4 (W.D. Pa. March 13, 2024); Sczesny v. New Jersey, 2022 WL 2047135, at *6-9 (D.N.J. June 7, 2022); Messina v. College of New Jersey, 566 F. Supp.3d 236, 245-49 (D.N.J. 2021); Smith v. Biden, 2021 WL 5195688, at *6 (D.N.J. Nov. 8, 2021); Smith v. Biden, 2021 WL 5195688, at *6 (D.N.J. Nov. 8, 2021).

Fourth Circuit:  Menk v. MITRE Corp., 713 F. Supp.3d 113, 174-76 (D. Md. 2024) (“In the context of vaccine mandates, courts have repeatedly rejected that the fundamental right at issue is refusing medical treatment and maintaining bodily integrity.”; “Because there is no fundamental right to refuse a vaccine, Defendant’s vaccine policy is subject to rational basis review.”); Lumley v. Town of Knightdale, 2024 WL 3678348, at *6 (E.D.N.C. Aug. 6, 2024) (“there is no fundamental right to refuse vaccination, so that potential prong of the path to strict scrutiny is foreclosed”); Antunes v. Rector & Visitors of University. of Virginia, 627 F. Supp.3d 553, 564-65 (W.D. Va. 2022) (“Courts apply a deferential standard when considering the constitutionality of vaccination requirements as related to the Due Process Clause.”), aff’d, 2024 WL 511038 (4th Cir. Feb. 9, 2024) (adopting district court opinion); McArthur v. Brabrand, 610 F. Supp.3d 822, 847 (E.D. Va. 2022) (“the government has the authority to mandate vaccinations in the interest of promoting public health”); Pavlock v. Perman, 2022 WL 3975177, at *4-5 (D. Md. Sept. 1, 2022) (“It is well-settled principle that a state and its instrumentalities may enact vaccination mandates as part of its police power.”); McCutcheon v. Enlivant ES, LLC, 2021 WL 5234787, at *3 (S.D.W. Va. Nov. 9, 2021) (“mandatory vaccination . . . efforts align well with the century-old Supreme Court mandate legalizing state-imposed mandatory vaccination for contagious diseases”); Bauer v. Summey, 2021 WL 4900922, at *10 (D.S.C. Oct. 21, 2021) (“federal courts have consistently held that vaccine mandates do not implicate a fundamental right and, accordingly, applied rational basis review in determining the constitutionality of such mandates”).

Fifth Circuit:  Bridges v. Methodist Hospital, 2024 WL 4354816, at *7 (S.D. Tex. Sept. 30, 2024) (“Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to refuse vaccination.”), aff’d, 2025 WL 1693074, at *2 (5th Cir. June 17, 2025) (at-will employers could impose vaccination mandates).

Sixth Circuit:  Clark v. Jackson, 2022 WL 1751420, at *3 (E.D. Tenn. May 31, 2022), (“Since Jacobson, federal courts have consistently held that vaccine mandates do not implicate a fundamental right and, accordingly, applied rational basis review in determining the constitutionality of such mandates.”) (citation and quotation marks omitted), aff’d in pertinent part, 2023 WL 2787325, at *6 (6th Cir. April 5, 2023); Norris v. Stanley, 2022 WL 247507, at *3 (W.D. Mich. Jan. 21, 2022) (“courts in numerous jurisdictions have applied Jacobson to the present-day COVID-19 vaccine mandates, and they have found that Jacobson requires a rational basis standard of review”); Norris v. Stanley, 567 F. Supp.3d 818, 822 (W.D. Mich. 2021) (“This Court must apply the law from the Supreme Court:  Jacobson essentially applied rational basis review and found that the vaccine mandate was rational in protect[ing] the public health and public safety.”); Beckerich v. St. Elizabeth Medical Center, 563 F. Supp.3d 633, 646 (E.D. Ky. 2021) (“Jacobson and its holding have not been overturned by the Supreme Court, and this Court will thus abide by it and its principles”); Norris v. Stanley, 558 F. Supp.3d 556, 558-59 (W.D. Mich. 2021) (“The Supreme Court further established a rational basis standard of review for vaccination mandates”); Harsman v. Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, 2021 WL 4504245, at *3 (S.D. Ohio Sept. 30, 2021) (“the overwhelming majority of courts to consider vaccine mandates have found them constitutionally sound”).

Seventh Circuit:  We covered Klaassen v. Trustees of Indiana University, 549 F. Supp.3d 836, 861-66 (N.D. Ind. 2021), affirmed in pertinent part, 24 F.4th 638 (7th Cir. 2022), in our prior post and here.  Klaassen was the first of the flood of COVID-19-era decisions applying Jacobson to vaccine mandates, and as discussed above the Seventh Circuit affirmed.  No further vaccine-related litigation arose in the Seventh Circuit.  Jacobson was invoked to uphold masking requirements in Joseph v. Becerra, 2022 WL 17262231, at *6 (W.D. Wis. Nov. 29, 2022), and DeGroot v. Evers, 2022 WL 843853, at *3 (W.D. Wis. March 22, 2022).  Otherwise this post is not concerned with masks, which are not prescription medical products.

Eighth Circuit:  Brandon v. Board of Education of City of St. Louis, 2023 WL 4104293, at *12 (E.D. Mo. June 21, 2023) (“Plaintiffs claim a right to refuse vaccines − a proposition that finds no footing in substantive-due-process caselaw”; “nothing in Plaintiffs’ complaint or briefing − or in the Court’s independent research − leads the Court to conclude that refusing vaccination is a ‘fundamental right’ under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment”).

Ninth Circuit:  Doescher v. Pan, 2025 WL 1705012, at *10-13 (E.D. Cal. June 18, 2025); Royce v. Pan, 2025 WL 834769, at *5 (S.D. Cal. March 17, 2025); Royce v. Bonta, 725 F. Supp.3d 1126, 1133 (S.D. Cal. 2024); Aleman v. County of Los Angeles, 2024 WL 5257028, at *6 (C.D. Cal. Sept. 23, 2024); Boysen v. PeaceHealth, 2024 WL 3888682, at *6 (D. Or. Aug. 19, 2024); MacDonald v. Oregon Health & Science University, 689 F. Supp.3d 906, 921-22 (D. Or. 2023); Wilkins v. Herron, 2023 WL 8276897, at *2 (D. Or. Nov. 30, 2023), aff’d, 2024 WL 5200177 (9th Cir. Dec. 23, 2024); Williams v. Brown, 2023 WL 6379771, at *3 (D. Or. Sept. 30, 2023); Behringer v. California Polytechnic State University, 2023 WL 6811813, at *3 (Mag. C.D. Cal. Sept. 15, 2023), adopted, 2023 WL 6810244 (C.D. Cal. Oct. 16, 2023), aff’d, 2025 WL 2028297 (9th Cir. July 21, 2025); Penna v. North Clackamas School Dist., 2023 WL 6003834, at *4 (Mag. D. Or. Aug. 11, 2023), adopted in pertinent part, 2023 WL 6850268 (D. Or. Oct. 17, 2023); Miller v. Farris, 2023 WL 4680370, at *9 (Mag. C.D. Cal. June 14, 2023), adopted, 2023 WL 4850749 (C.D. Cal. July 28, 2023); Schmidt v. City of Pasadena, 2023 WL 4291440, at *10 (C.D. Cal. March 8, 2023); Cunningham v. University of Hawaii, 2023 WL 1991783, at *7 (D. Haw. Feb. 14, 2023), aff’d, 2023 WL 10351531 (9th Cir. Sept. 14, 2023); Johnson v. Brown, 614 F. Supp.3d 776, 782 (D. Or. 2022), aff’d in pertinent part, 2024 WL 747022, at *3-4 (9th Cir. Feb. 23, 2024); O’Hailpin v. Hawaiian Airlines, Inc., 583 F. Supp.3d 1294, 1312-13 (D. Haw. 2022); Burcham v. City of Los Angeles, 562 F. Supp.3d 694, 706-07 (C.D. Cal. 2022); George v. Grossmont Cuyamaca Community College Dist. Board of Governors, 2022 WL 16722357, at *8-10, 15-16 (S.D. Cal. Nov. 4, 2022); La County Free Foundation v. County of Los Angeles, 2022 WL 18278626, at *2 (C.D. Cal. Sept. 7, 2022); LA County Free Foundation v. County of Los Angeles, 2022 WL 18278624, at *4-5 (C.D. Cal. June 1, 2022); America’s Frontline Doctors v. Wilcox, 2022 WL 1514038, at *7-9 (C.D. Cal. May 5, 2022); Wise v. Inslee, 2022 WL 1243662, at *4 (E.D. Wash. April 27, 2022); Johnson v. Brown, 567 F. Supp.3d 1230, 1248-51 (D. Or. 2021); Williams v. Brown, 567 F. Supp.3d 1213, 1224-26 (D. Or. 2021); Kheriaty v. Regents of University of California, 2021 WL 6298332, at *6-7 (C.D. Cal. Dec. 8, 2021), aff’d, 2022 WL 17175070, at *1 (9th Cir. Nov. 23, 2022); Jensen v. Biden, 2021 WL 10280395, at *8-9 (E.D. Wash. Nov. 19, 2021); Doe v. San Diego Unified School Dist., 2021 WL 5396136, at *3-4 (S.D. Cal. Nov. 18, 2021); Masseth v. Jones, 2021 WL 6752317, at *7-8, 10-11 (C.D. Cal. Nov. 9, 2021); Wise v. Inslee, 2021 WL 4951571 at *2 (E.D. Wash. Oct. 25, 2021); Kheriaty v. Regents of University of California, 2021 WL 4714664, at *5-6 (C.D. Cal. Sept. 29, 2021); America’s Frontline Doctors v. Wilcox, 2021 WL 4546923, at *4-5 (C.D. Cal. July 30, 2021).

Tenth Circuit:  Valdez v. Grisham, 676 F. Supp.3d 1021, 1034-38 (D.N.M. 2022) (“rational basis standard” applies “[b]ecause [plaintiff] does not have a fundamental right to work unvaccinated in a hospital or congregate care facility”; “conclusion is in keeping with that reached in the scores of cases holding that vaccine mandates do not implicate a fundamental right”), remanded on other grounds, 2024 WL 2319752 (10th Cir. May 22, 2024) (lack of jurisdiction); Legaretta v. Macias, 603 F. Supp.3d 1050, 1064 (D.N.M. 2022) (following Jacobson and “scores of cases holding that vaccine mandates do not implicate a fundamental right and that, as a result, rational basis review applies”); Griner v. Biden, 2022 WL 7501065, at *7 (D. Utah Oct. 13, 2022) (“Under case law that has been in place for more than a hundred years . . . there is no fundamental right to refuse vaccination, even where (unlike here) the government would impose a vaccination requirement on the general population under threat of criminal sanctions.”); SNL Workforce Freedom Alliance v. National Technological & Engineering Solutions, LLC, 2022 WL 3715858, at *11-12 (D.N.M. Aug. 29, 2022) (“Plaintiffs have not cited to any law establishing that mandatory vaccinations . . . violate a fundamental right.  Rather, cases generally hold that mandatory vaccinations do not violate a fundamental right.”) (citations omitted); Valdez v. Grisham, 559 F. Supp.3d 1161, 1173-77 (D.N.M. 2021) (“federal courts have consistently held that vaccine mandates do not implicate a fundamental right and that rational basis review therefore applies in determining the constitutionality of such mandates”), aff’d, 2022 WL 2129071 (10th Cir. June 14, 2022).

Eleventh Circuit:  Presumably because the states in the Eleventh Circuit went the other way and prohibited vaccination mandates (which, under Jacobson, is also their prerogative), we didn’t find any Eleventh Circuit COVID-19 cases applying Jacobson to such mandates.  Our prior post discusses favorable appellate authority in Alabama and Georgia.

District of Columbia Circuit: Lucas v. D.C. Water & Sewer Authority, 2024 WL 4198854, at *4 (D.D.C. Sept. 16, 2024) (“Jacobson . . . established that vaccine mandates enacted to protect the public health and the public safety do not implicate fundamental rights”; “federal courts post-Jacobson have consistently held that they do not and should thus meet rational basis review”) (citations and quotation marks omitted); Altschuld v. Raimondo, 2021 WL 6113563, at *6 (D.D.C. Nov. 8, 2021) (“this court is guided by the century-old standard that mandatory vaccinations are a suitable expression of the public interest in health and safety”).

For completeness, we found a few recent state trial court decisions that relied on Jacobson to uphold vaccination mandates against Due Process/”fundamental rights” challenges.  Leahy v. Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, 2024 WL 2208762, at *2 (Mass. Super. April 24, 2024); Bravo v. De Blasio, 167 N.Y.S.3d 708, 717-18 (N.Y. Sup. 2022); Generoso v. Adams, 164 N.Y.S.3d 383, 396 (N.Y. Sup. 2022); Chicago Fire Fighters Union v. City of Chicago, 2022 WL 20833557, at *5-6 (Ill. Cir. Aug. 8, 2022); Brignall v. New York State Unified Court System, 2022 WL 17543641, at *19 (N.Y. Sup. April 13, 2022); New York City Municipal Labor Committee v. City of New York, 156 N.Y.S.3d 681, 686 (N.Y. Sup. 2021); Firefighters4Freedom Foundation v. City of Los Angeles, 2021 WL 11677336, at *12-13 (Cal. Super. Dec. 21, 2021); In the Matter of the Application of v. Blasio, 2021 WL 6005291, at *4-5 (N.Y. Sup. Dec. 20, 2021); Coalition for Healthcare Workers against Medical Mandates v. Lambrew, 2021 WL 9037755, at *6 (Me. Super. Oct. 22, 2021); Oregon Fraternal Order of Police v. Brown, 2021 WL 4730408, at *7-8  (Or. Cir. Oct. 7, 2021).  Cf. Powerback Rehabilitation, LLC v. Kansas Dept. of Labor, 2024 WL 361178, at *11 (Kan. Dist. Jan. 30, 2024) (citing Jacobson in finding that state anti-vaccination mandate did “not meet the rational basis test” due to its “baseless invocation of the unconstitutionality of federal vaccination law”).

Finally, decisions that purported to disregard Jacobson as outdated have not fared very well.  County of Butler v. Wolf, 486 F. Supp.3d 883 (W.D. Pa. 2020), concluded – based on a couple of dissents and a law review article, that it was “not appropriate” to continue following Jacobson.  Id. at 897-899.  On appeal, the Third Circuit ordered the opinion vacated so that it would “not “spawn any legal consequences,” and further ordered that the complaint be dismissed.  County of Butler v. Governor of Pennsylvania, 8 F.4th 226, 231-32 (3d Cir. 2021).  Another antivax decision was pilloried in Navy SEAL 1 v. Austin, 2022 WL 1294486, at *9 (D.D.C. April 29, 2022), as being supported by “neither law or science.”

Thus, far from being another casualty of the COVID-19 epidemic, Jacobson not only survived, but in many ways came through the pandemic’s wave of vaccine mandates – and vaccine mandate litigation – stronger than it went into it.  Not a single COVID-19-related appellate decision contrary to Jacobson has survived.

Finally, please note that we’re being comprehensive, but not exhaustive.  We have limited ourselves to vaccination cases.  If needed, there is more Jacobson-based precedent out there in cases addressing other COVID-19 cases in the context of masking and other non-vaccine mandates.