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11/06/2002 -- CITIZENS GROUP AND HEALTH CHOICE ADVOCATES FILE AMICUS BRIEF IN BOONE/McCARTHY APPEAL In the last two weeks, briefs filed in the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals have challenged the basic constitutionality of "mandatory" vaccination laws. On behalf of the Arkansas plaintiffs whose Civil Rights suits led to the judicial abolition of the Arkansas "religious exemption" statute, Gage & Moxley and their associate counsel in Arkansas have asserted that the First Amendment creates a right of religious-based conscientious exemption to vaccination, especially in the absence of emergency. The brief argues that the "police power" which underlies the landmark 1905 Massachusetts case--whereby the Supreme Court authorized "mandatory" vaccination--is only valid in an emergency, such as the smallpox epidemic which was ongoing in Massachusetts at the time of that case, Jacobson v. Massachusetts. The lack of an emergency is the key aspect of the right to "vaccine objection," as argued in the brief; the decisions on appeal which find a "civic duty" to submit to vaccination would seem to state that public health officials may order the vaccination of adults, as well, in the absence of emergency. These Arkansas civil right plaintiffs therefore assert that American liberty interests include the right to say "no" to unwanted medical treatment. Arguing that informed consent includes the right not to consent, the plaintiffs argue that the State may not be given a bigger hammer, as it were, to require prophylactic immunization, than it has to prevent the abortion of unborn children. The amicus brief, which must be accepted by the Court after a 10-day objection period for the State, poses that constitutional problems attend any system which randomly visits injury upon citizens, where no mechanism is in place for citizens to opt out, or even participate in the decision which places them at risk. |
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