In a stunning turn of events, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett rejected a plea from a group of Indiana University students to stop the university’s requirement to force them to be vaccinated to attend the university in person.
The requirement for the university is that all students must have the vaccine that attend, and Barrett a conservative upheld the insanity.
Barrett rejected one of the most controversial and publicly talked about issues in America, and refused to even give an opinion. Let that sink in America. She made the decision on her own and did not confer the matter with any of the other justices.
Judge Frank Easterbrook of the 7th Circuit Court wrong his opinion supporting the school.
“Each university may decide what is necessary to keep other students safe in a congregate setting,” Judge Frank Easterbrook wrote in the 7th Circuit opinion supporting the school. “Vaccinations protect not only the vaccinated persons but also those who come in contact with them, and at a university close contact is inevitable.”
In their filing to the Supreme Court, the students claimed a constitutional violation.
“Students are facing IU’s imminent demand that they relinquish their constitutional rights in order to start school this fall,” their application said. It added that the school “is coercing students to give up their rights to bodily integrity, autonomy, and of medical treatment choice in exchange for the discretionary benefit of matriculating at IU.”
“The risk of serious morbidity and mortality from COVID for those under 30 is close to zero,” their lawyer, James Bopp, wrote. “The known and unknown risks associated with COVID vaccines, particularly in those under 30, outweigh the risks to that population from the disease itself.”
It added: “ ‘Protection of others’ does not relieve our society from the central canon of medical ethics requiring voluntary and informed consent.”
The lower courts relied on a Supreme Court precedent from 1905. In Jacobson v. Massachusetts, the court backed a government requirement that people get vaccinated against smallpox or pay a fine.
Easterbrook, who is prominent in the conservative legal establishment, said the Indiana University case was even easier than Jacobson for two reasons.
One is that the law at issue in 1905 did not contain exceptions for religious or medical reasons, as the university does, he wrote. And secondly, the requirement applies only to those who want to attend Indiana University.
“People who do not want to be vaccinated may go elsewhere,” he wrote.
The case is Klaassen v. Trustees of Indiana University.
Thanks to our friends at MSN for contributing to this article.
