Biden vaccine mandate raises longstanding legal questions, experts say
Throughout the pandemic, public health experts have frequently pointed to the Supreme Court’s 1905 decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts to justify state vaccine mandates. But experts say that case is unlikely to have much influence over the legal challenges raised to the new Biden administration policy.
Henning Jacobson, a pastor from Cambridge, Mass., refused a smallpox vaccination during an outbreak of the disease in 1905, citing bad reactions he had to shots in the past. He was fined $5 – about $150 today. He sued, claiming that the state’s vaccine mandate violated his 14th Amendment rights. But the Supreme Court turned back his challenge, asserting that “a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members.”
A 7-2 majority of the court ruled that Massachusetts was permitted to require smallpox vaccinations. But even before Biden’s announcement, some experts had questioned the relevance of the decision to the way the high court reviews such matters today. [Continue reading…]
President Biden’s new coronavirus vaccination mandates have prompted some backlash, but the two federal departments that already require vaccinations say their actions are doing what they intended: getting more shots in arms.
Since the Pentagon announced last month that active-duty military personnel would be required to be vaccinated, the percentage of service members with at least one shot has risen to 83 percent from 76 percent, according to Defense Department data.
At the Department of Veterans Affairs, which issued a vaccine mandate for its 115,000 frontline health care workers seven weeks ago, 82 percent of those employees are now fully vaccinated, up from 77 percent, and the number of shots it has given to all of its workers has more than doubled since early July, said Terrence Hayes, a spokesman for the department.
The increases elude the goals of getting virtually everyone at both agencies inoculated, but at least in the military, where troops have long been used to taking orders and avoiding voluntary actions, the numbers are expected to rise. Each service branch is working through its enforcement plan. [Continue reading…]