Vaccination Research Paper

As mentioned above, every jurisdiction in the United States, including the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, requires children to be vaccinated before they may attend school. Each state has some variation in their compulsory laws due to the states’ ability to determine which of the vaccines recommended by the Center of Disease and Prevention (CDC) the state will require for school entry. Despite these variations, written verification of immunization from the child’s health care provide is required by most, if not all, states. For example, Florida statute 1003.22(4) only requires that each child presents “or has on file with the school a certification of immunization for the prevention of the communicable diseases for which immunization

is required.” Another example would be New York’s immunization law which requires that “every child entering or attending…school” must provide that school with “proof of immunization.”
Although all states require vaccinations for admittance into school, each state does provide for exemptions.

There are three types of exemptions from the compulsory laws: medical, religious, and philosophical. The acceptance of these exemptions varies among states. This means that some states could require vaccinations with “exemptions available only for medical reasons.” Only two states have allowed only medical exemptions: Mississippi and West Virginia. Other states may require vaccinations with “exemptions for medical or religious reasons.” For example, New York allow for parents to claim vaccination exemptions if they “hold genuine and sincere religious beliefs” or are qualified for a medical exemption. And the remaining states require vaccinations with exemptions for any of the three reasons mentioned above (medical, religious, or philosophical). For example, California allows for all three types of vaccination exemptions. The exemptions based on personal beliefs, which seem to include religious and philosophical beliefs, are found within California Health and Safety Code §120365(a), while the religious exemption is found in §

120370.
ii. The Early Supreme Court Challenges of Compulsory Immunization Laws
After the states adopted compulsory immunization laws, constitutional challenges were almost immediately raised. The Supreme Court of the United States first ruled on the constitutionality of the compulsory laws in 1905 with Jacobson v. Massachusetts. In Jacobson, the plaintiff appealed up to the Supreme Court after the highest court in Massachusetts held that the law mandating smallpox vaccinations was constitutional. Jacobson argued that the law was an infringement of the rights afforded to him under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. The Supreme Court affirmed the Massachusetts Supreme Court, holding that the law enacted was “a reasonable and proper exercise of the [state’s] police power,” and that the program had a real and substantial relation to the protection of the public health and safety. The Supreme Court later upheld the states’ ability to mandate vaccinations in Zucht v. King.
In Zucht, the city of San Antonio passed an ordinance that required a certification proving a child has been vaccinated before the child would be allowed into public or private school.

Rosalyn Zucht did not provide this certification and was thereby excluded from attending either the public or the private schools in the city. A suit was brought against the school board alleging that Zucht’s liberty interests were deprived without due process. The Supreme Court reiterated it’s holding in Jacobson and stated that “it is within the police power of a state to provide for compulsory vaccination.” The court went on to say the ordinance fell within the state’s police powers and it did not violate either due process or equal

protection.
iii. Other Constitutional Challenges
After these initial court cases, there were more parental challenges to the states’ ability to mandate the vaccination of school children. However, many of these litigations involved the exemptions that were carved out by the states. Most cases involved the religious exemptions whereby parents challenged the denial of exemption applications by using the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” The first clause is normally called the establishment clause and the second is called the free exercise clause. The Fourteenth Amendment, more commonly the equal protection clause under the Fourteenth Amendment, states that “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
In Dalli v. Board of Education, the plaintiff was denied a religious exemption for her child. She argued that the Board’s denial was in violation of both the equal protection and the free exercise of religion clauses. The court found that the state’s statute violated both the First and Fourteenth Amendment with the “recognized…religious denomination” provision, because it allowed for “preferred treatment of one group and discrimination against another.” Therefore, it could be gleamed from this case that any state regulation that provides a religious exemption cannot limit the scope to only “recognized denominations” without violating the Constitution. Another case which has a similar holding is Brown v. Stone.
In Brown Mississippi implemented a statute which required the vaccination of children with two exceptions – medical and religious. However, the religious exemption provision required proof via certification from “an officer of a church of recognized denomination.” The plaintiff brought an action alleging the religious exemption provision was a violation of the free-exercise clause. The court agreed that the provision violated the Constitution, but on a Fourteenth Amendment basis not a First. The court reasoned that the exemption would be an Equal protection violation because it would “provide for the exemption of children of parents whose religious beliefs conflict with the immunization requirements” which would then “discriminate against the great majority of children whose parents have no such religious convictions.” However, not every court has found that the states’ religious exemptions violated the Constitution. The court in Cude v. State found that that Arkansas’ vaccination law was valid and that the parents did not “have the right to deny their children an education” for religious reasons if the religious grounds were “inconsistent with the peace, safety and health of the inhabitants of the State.”