Last term the newly empowered conservative majority on the Supreme Court demonstrated to all that precedent is not so precedential, even when it had stood for nearly fifty years. They very nearly did it again, but just missed, targeting precedent on religious exemptions and vaccine mandates that has been around for more than twice as long.
Continue Reading Vaccine Mandates and Religion at the Supreme Court
As we mentioned in last year’s comprehensive “Survival of the Vaxxest” blogpost on the constitutionality (for over a century) of governmental vaccine mandates, there is no appellate precedent requiring any sort of religious exemption to such mandates. Freedom of religion does not mean freedom to infect everyone else.
While some jurisdictions allow exceptions
Using its increasingly notorious “shadow docket,” the United States Supreme Court recently stayed operation of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”) had imposed on large (more than 100 employees) employers nationwide. See National Federation of Independent Businesses v. OSHA, ___ S. Ct. ___, 2022 WL 120952
Some of our posts about challenges to Covid-19 vaccines or treatments might have been a bit … strident. It is hard to be otherwise when the cases involve such high stakes and so little merit.
But this time we will try to take our cue from the court in Frey v. Trinity Health-Michigan, 2021
There are two main questions that surround the issue of all-vaccinated juries in the COVID-19 era. The first is can you seek to exclude non-vaccinated persons from the venire for cause. The second is do you want to. At just about every CLE program we attend these days, whether in person or electronically, where judges
Now in this Winter of Covid discontent, made inglorious by the silliness and selfishness of anti-vaxxers, we warm ourselves with a look back at how a court dismantled the absurd arguments challenging vaccine mandates. Sure, we have written about similar cases a lot lately – here for example. “Yet once more, O ye laurels, and
We’ve commented extensively on COVID–19–related vaccination cases, because vaccines are prescription medical products. We haven’t commented on another aspect of litigation intended to sabotage public health efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic – attacks on masking requirements − mostly because masks don’t require prescriptions. The kind of masks involved in
Four times in the past several months (here, here, here, and here), we have reported on cases in which plaintiffs have sought injunctions that would compel hospitals to administer the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin to COVID-19 patients. Today we report on another such case, Texas Health Huguley, Inc. v. Jones,
Now that a childhood COVID-19 vaccine has received FDA approval, the vaccination of school-aged minors is underway. Just as vaccination requirements for adults have prompted a wave of litigation, we expect the same with respect to COVID-19 vaccination as a prerequisite to attending primary schools. But with a twist. Unlike adults who ignore mandatory