Associate Justice Barrett latest in line of jurists to issue order favoring schools; Supreme Court ruled in 1905 in Jacobson v. Massachusetts that states could enforce vaccination mandates through criminal penalties
The United States Supreme Court refused Thursday to block Indiana University’s requirement that students be vaccinated against Covid-19 before being allowed to attend classes in the fall semester. Justice Amy Coney Barrett denied a request from eight students at Indiana University who had claimed the University of Indiana should be barred from mandating that they be vaccinated because the risks associated with the vaccines outweighed the potential benefits for the population in their age group.
Justice Barrett’s rejection of the request from students contained no dissents from any of the other justices.
“Once again, the court has affirmed our legitimate public health interest in assuring the safety of our students, faculty and staff and we are excited to welcome our community back for the fall semester,” Indiana University spokesman Chuck Carney said in an email.
The students had lost their case at the trial level and at the Court of Appeals level before asking the Supreme Court to stop Indiana from mandating that all students be vaccinated. before entering the classroom.
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago had earlier dismissed the students claim. Seventh Circuit Judge Frank Easterbrook, when declining to grant an injunction as requested by the students, noted that the Supreme Court had ruled in 1905 in Jacobson v. Massachusetts that states could enforce vaccination mandates through criminal penalties. Unlike the university’s mandate, he said, Massachusetts’ smallpox vaccine mandate did not include a religious exception.
The plaintiffs, he wrote, nonetheless claim that Indiana University’s mandate infringed on a “fundamental right. Yet Jacobson, which sustained a criminal conviction for refusing to be vaccinated, shows that plaintiffs lack such a right. To the contrary, vaccination requirements, like other public-health measures, have been common in this nation.”
The judge also wrote that the plaintiffs’ right to bodily integrity did not mean that the school could not require vaccines or other safety measures, just as their right to property did not stop it from charging tuition. “Undergraduates must part with at least $11,000 a year (in-state tuition), even though Indiana could not summarily confiscate that sum from all residents of college age.”
Source: Klaassen v. Trustees of Indiana University, 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 21-2326.