The Vermont ruling does not say schools can vaccinate children without parental consent

BY MELISSA GOLDIN

Social media users are misrepresenting a Vermont Supreme Court ruling, claiming it gives schools permission to vaccinate children even if their parents don’t agree.

The ruling involved a lawsuit brought by Dario and Shujen Politella against the Windham Southeast School District and state officials over their child’s mistaken vaccination against COVID-19 in 2021, when he was 6 years old. A lower court had dismissed the original lawsuit and an amended version. An appeal was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on November 19.

But the Vermont Supreme Court’s ruling isn’t as far-reaching as some online have suggested. In reality, it concluded that anyone protected by the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP) is immune from state lawsuits.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

CLAIM: The Vermont Supreme Court ruled that schools can vaccinate children against their parents’ wishes.

THE FACTS: The claim stems from a July 26 Vermont Supreme Court ruling that found anyone protected by the PREP Act is immune from state lawsuits, including the officials named in Politella’s lawsuit. The ruling does not authorize schools to vaccinate children at their own discretion.

According to the lawsuit, the Politella’s son – named LP – was given a dose of the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination clinic at the Academy School in Brattleboro, even though his father, Dario, told the assistant principal several days earlier that his son should not be vaccinated receive. What officials said was a mistake was that LP was taken out of class and a “handwritten tag” was placed on his shirt with the name and date of birth of another student, LK, who had already been vaccinated that day. LP was then vaccinated.

Ultimately, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that the officers involved in the case could not be sued.

“We conclude that the PREP Act immunizes every defendant in this case and that fact alone is sufficient to dismiss the case,” the Vermont Supreme Court said in its decision. “We conclude that if the federal PREP Act immunizes a defendant, the PREP Act bars any federal claims against that defendant as a matter of law.”

Enacted by Congress in 2005, the PREP Act authorizes the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to issue a declaration in the event of a public health emergency that provides immunity from liability for activities related to medical countermeasures, such as: . B. the administration of a vaccination, except in cases of “intentional misconduct” resulting in “death or serious bodily harm.” A statement against COVID-19 was made on March 17, 2020. It expires on December 31st. Federal lawsuits alleging intentional misconduct are filed in Washington.

Social media users described the Vermont Supreme Court ruling as having consequences beyond what it actually says.

“The Vermont Supreme Court has ruled that schools can forcibly vaccinate children against Covid against their parents’ wishes,” reads an X post that had been liked and shared about 16,600 times as of Tuesday. “The Supreme Court decided a case involving a 6-year-old boy who was forced by his school to take a Covid mRNA injection. However, his family had specifically stated that they did not want their child to receive the ‘vaccinations’.”

Other users claimed that the ruling gives schools permission to administer any vaccine to students, not just one against COVID-19, without parental consent.

Rod Smolla, president of the Vermont Law and Graduate School and an expert on constitutional law, told The Associated Press that the ruling “simply says that the federal law in question, the PREP Act, precludes state lawsuits in cases where officials mistakenly administer a… . “Vaccination without consent.”

“There is nothing in the Vermont Supreme Court opinion that says school officials can vaccinate a child against parental orders,” he wrote in an email.

Asked whether the claims circulating online had any merit, Ronald Ferrara, an attorney representing the Politellas, told the AP that while the ruling does not say schools can vaccinate students without parental consent, officials do could interpret as meaning they could get away with This applies under the PREP Act, at least when it comes to COVID-19 vaccines. He explained that the U.S. Supreme Court’s appeal seeks to determine whether the Vermont Supreme Court interpreted the PREP Act beyond the intent of Congress.

“Politella’s fundamental liberty interest in deciding whether her son should receive voluntary medical treatment was contested by state and school officials,” he wrote in an email to the AP. “The Vermont court misunderstands the scope of PREP Act immunity (which depends on informed consent for medical treatments not approved by the FDA) to cover this denial of justice and the underlying battery.”

Ferrara added that he was not aware of the claims’ circulation online, but that he “can understand how laypeople might equate the court’s erroneous grant of immunity for misconduct with blessing such misconduct.”

Originally published: December 3, 2024 at 6:42 pm EST