When I came
across a New York court case dealing with immunizations and school, it caught
my attention, probably because my daughter received a nice rash along with her
toy dinosaur after getting her MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) vaccine a few
weeks ago. My husband and I are pro-vaccination
as we believe the benefits outweigh the disadvantages of any vaccine given to
our child. Yes, I was annoyed that she
broke out in a rash, but thankfully it did not seem to bother her in the least
and the only real inconvenience was having to reschedule her pictures so I
wasn’t paying for memories of her looking like a Dalmatian. All of that being said, the debate about
whether or not to vaccinate your kiddos is not the subject of this article –
it’s about the recent ruling of Judge William F. Kuntz, II, of the Federal
District Court in Brooklyn, New York.
Like
Michigan, New York requires students to be vaccinated against certain illnesses
prior to attending day care, pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and grades 1
through 12. A parent or guardian can,
however, request an exemption to the immunization policy by having the child’s
doctor fill out a form detailing why it would be harmful to the child to be
immunized. If you are objecting for
religious reasons, New York requires that the student, parent, or guardian hold
“genuine and sincere religious beliefs which are contrary to the practice of
immunization. “ If you are denied the
exemption, you can of course, in the spirit of the American judicial system,
appeal this decision. For the first
appeal, your child can stay in school.
However, if your appeal is denied, and you decide to give it one last go
‘round with the New York State Commissioner of Education, your child cannot
attend school during that time period.
The crux of
the recent case surrounded New York’s policy excluding unvaccinated children
from school when there was an outbreak of a vaccine preventable disease. Three families sued, two of which had already
secured religious exemptions to the vaccination policy. Their children were not permitted to attend
school during a chickenpox outbreak. The third family filed suit due to having
the exemption denied on both medical and religious grounds. The main allegations were violations of the
families’ First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
Judge Kuntz
ruled in favor of public health over the religious exemption, and upheld the
policy allowing New York to bar unvaccinated children from school during
vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks, based on case law from the early 1900’s. In Jacobson
v Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 197 US 11 (1905), Henning Jacobson was
appealing his $5.00 fine (big bucks back then) which he received for failure to
comply with an order to be vaccinated for smallpox during an outbreak. The
Supreme Court upheld the fine, helping to cement the government’s ability to
require vaccinations for public health reasons.
The New York
ruling will assist other states in preventing unvaccinated children from
attending school during a disease outbreak, which could be a good thing
depending on what your beliefs are regarding immunizations. At a minimum, I’m sure this adds some interesting talking points
in the current debate of the balance between public, individual, corporation,
and religious rights that the Hobby Lobby SCOTUS case brought into the
spotlight.
