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10/23/2001 -- ARKANSAS "RECOGNIZED RELIGION" CHALLENGE On Monday, October 15, Federal District Judge Susan Weber Wright of the Eastern District of Arkansas entered a preliminary injunction prohibiting the State of Arkansas and the school district of Cabot, Arkansas, from denying a free and appropriate public education to Ashley Boone, a ninth grader whose mother has raised religious objections to the Hepatitis B vaccine. Cynthia Boone, Ashley's mother, was unable to obtain a religious exemption to the vaccine because she does not belong to a "recognized religion" which formally opposes vaccination. Her attorneys, Gregory T. Karber of Fort Smith, Arkansas, and Robert T. Moxley of Gage & Moxley, challenge the statutory scheme which requires a "recognized" religion as the basis of conscientious objection. In the suit, which Judge Wright has placed onto a fast track, for disposition before the end of the current semester, it may become necessary to rely on the First and/or Fourteenth Amendments as the wellsprings of the right to informed consent or conscientious objection to the conscription of children into the war against disease; Judge Wright has indicated her distaste for being placed into a "legislative" role where she might be required to "re-write" the challenged legislation. |
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