You Lose This One, Measles.
RFK Jr. is not going to be happy about this.
Fun fact — there are only five states left that don’t allow religious exemptions to public school vaccine mandates. The first four are California, Connecticut, Maine, and New York, which probably isn’t too surprising to anyone. The fifth, however, is West Virginia of all places. Who would have thought? Perhaps it’s a vestige of the days when the state was a Democratic stronghold and probably elected some folks who realized a measles outbreak would be a bad time regardless of how sincere the beliefs of those who started it might be.
Recently, there was a challenge to the state’s law from some parents who believed that their child should be let into public school without being immunized, because some of the vaccines were originally developed with cell lines derived from aborted fetuses. It’s a bit of a reach, particularly considering that the cells used in vaccine development today are merely the descendants of those cells and not the actual cells themselves, not to mention the fact that it’s hardly as though the fetus was created and aborted specifically for the purpose of creating vaccines.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals seems to have thought so as well, determining on Wednesday that West Virginians still may not send their little Typhoid Mary to school without being inoculated against chickenpox, hepatitis-b, measles, meningitis, mumps, diphtheria, polio, rubella, tetanus, and whooping cough, as the state’s law serves the public interest.
“We live in a society that accords its citizens enormous benefits. In return, states can, in a measured way, require certain exactions and accommodations to the broader social interest,” Judge Harvie Wilkinson wrote for the majority. “West Virginia’s compulsory vaccination law does exactly that. It is a legitimate exercise of the state’s power to protect the health and well-being of school children.”
Wilkinson, by the way, is a Reagan appointee, and the judge who joined him in the majority, Judge Steven Agee, was a George W. Bush appointee — which means no one can complain about the mean liberal judges who wouldn’t let a child Oregon Trail her classmates for Jesus.
Krystle and Anthony Perry argued that because they had planned to enroll their daughter in a virtual public school, she should not be subject to the mandates. However, the defense argued that they still have to take tests in person, at which point she could expose other children — possibly some immunocompromised children who can’t be vaccinated for valid medical reasons — to a cornucopia of vaccine-preventable illnesses, and those children should be able to take their tests without having to worry that they’re going to end up spending their life in an iron lung because Lil’ Susie’s parents thought God would prefer that to her getting a vaccine that was originally developed using cells from an already-aborted fetus.
“West Virginia requires school children to get vaccinated because vaccination generally promotes their health and well-being. Nothing about that health decision disfavors religious beliefs,” Wilkinson wrote for the majority. “Medical exemptions are thus categorically incomparable to conscientious exemptions of all stripes in terms of how they affect West Virginia’s health interests.”
The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the rights of states to protect children in this way, most notably in in 1944’s Prince v. Massachusetts, a case involving parents who believed their religious beliefs entitled them to violate child labor laws. Then, the Court specifically noted that “[t]he right to practice religion freely does not include the right to expose the community or the child to communicable disease or the latter to ill-health or death.”
This seems like a thing we should keep in mind more often.
Wilkinson, who, again, is a Reagan appointee, made a point of noting that neither he nor any other judge is required to go along with the Trump administration’s stupidity with regard to vaccines.
“The fact that the executive branch of the federal government may be evincing skepticism to vaccinations does not require the enlistment of the judicial branch in an assault upon state vaccination requirements,” Wilkinson wrote. “States remain free to recognize the weighty medical evidence supporting the value of vaccinations in safeguarding public health. Such determinations lie at the very heart of the states’ police power.”
Burn!
As of April 3, there have been 1,768 cases of measles in the United States so far this year, mostly the result of 17 distinct outbreaks. None of those cases has been in West Virginia and, thanks to this decision, things will likely stay that way.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
well I forgot I had robyn scheduled for this morning when I posted Evan this morning. My bad! Comment on both anyway!
I'm just hoping we won't have to go to Canada to get our shots when we're due for them. I wish I were joking...