Forced vaccination is battery, NC Supreme Court rules

North Carolina’s Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the immunity granted by the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, which extends liability protections for medical products like vaccines, does not protect against constitutional rights violations. 

In August 2021, Western Guilford High School claimed to have detected COVID-19 cases among its football team. In a letter to parents, the school announced that all players were required to submit to testing. The letter said nothing about vaccines, which is why 14-year-old Tanner Smith had no reason to think he would receive one. But when he arrived at the school clinic to be tested a few days later, workers offered to inject him with the experimental mRNA shots. Smith did not want to be vaccinated. Clinic workers were unable to reach his mother, Emily Happel, to obtain consent to vaccinate her child. They did not even attempt to ask Smith’s stepfather, who was sitting in the parking lot. Against Smith’s protests, they forcibly injected him with the Pfizer vaccine.

A district court and an appellate court both ruled that the PREP Act shielded the school from liability. Under the PREP Act, the HHS can grant people and entities immunity from liability for “loss” caused by their medical products during public health emergencies. Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, then-HHS Secretary Alex Azar declared a public health emergency and granted immunity liability for COVID-19 products, which in February 2021 also came to include vaccines.

Last week, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled that while the PREP Act shields the school from lawsuits related to “loss” caused by the vaccine, deliberately violating someone’s constitutional rights isn’t a loss—in this case, it’s battery. North Carolina’s Constitution includes a Law of the Land Clause that protects a person’s right to bodily integrity, which means they have a right to refuse optional medical treatment. This is the same way the US Supreme Court understands the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Due process includes bodily integrity, which means the right to refuse unwanted touching such as nonmandatory medical treatment. It also includes a parent’s right to make decisions about their child’s healthcare, which Western Guilford High School denied to Emily Happel.

The state Supreme Court’s ruling sets an important precedent, shielding providers from liability for tort injuries but not from constitutional violations. In other words, the immunity ends where constitutional rights begin.

What about COVID-19 vaccine mandates?

However, those constitutional rights do not include the right to refuse mandatory vaccines. In 1905, a pastor who had been injured from vaccines named Henning Jacobson refused to submit to the smallpox vaccine mandate decreed by the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Jacobson was fined $5 — equal to about $175 today — and sued the state. In a 7-2 decision, the US Supreme Court sided with Massachusetts. Jacobson vs. Massachusetts effectively made vaccine mandates legal on the grounds that they are necessary for public safety.

Prominent physician groups like America’s Frontline Doctors have maintained that COVID-19 vaccine mandates should not have been covered under Jacobson vs. Massachusetts and were inherently illegal. Unlike smallpox—a lethal and dangerous illness—COVID with its roughly 99.9% survival rate was not a threat to public safety. Furthermore, the mRNA shots are not vaccines. According to the definition at the time of Jacobson vs. Massachusetts, vaccines prevented disease. This was the understanding until 2015, when the CDC changed the definition to mean vaccines produced immunity against a specific disease. In late 2021, as it became clear that the mRNA injections neither prevented nor immunized against COVID-19, the CDC changed the definition of vaccine again to mean something that produces protection against disease, like a therapeutic. 

North Carolina’s ruling contrasts with the ruling issued by the Vermont Supreme Court in a similar case, where a six-year-old boy was injected with the COVID-19 vaccine against the express objection of his parent. The court ruled that the school and its officials are immune from any lawsuits under the PREP Act despite the clear violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. 

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