Court upholds constitutionality of New York State immunization law |
On Board Online • February 9, 2015
By Pilar Sokol
Deputy General Counsel
In a recent decision relevant to concerns over the expansion of a national measles outbreak, a federal appellate court with jurisdiction over New York has upheld the constitutionality of New York's mandatory vaccination requirements for public school attendance. The ruling also upholds the authority of school officials to temporarily exclude from school students exempted from the immunization requirements during an outbreak of a vaccine-related disease.
The state's vaccination requirements prohibit schools from admitting students who have not been immunized or allowing them to attend for more than 14 days unless they qualify for either a medical or religious exemption.
Students must present a certificate of immunization against vaccine-preventable illnesses identified in state law. Applicable regulations permit the temporary exclusion from school of students with a medical or religious exemption during an outbreak of a vaccine-preventable disease.
In Phillips, et al. v. City of New York, et al., parents argued that both the statute and the regulation violate their rights under various provisions of the federal Constitution, including the substantive due process protections of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed a lower court's dismissal of the parents' claims.
According to the parents, a growing body of scientific evidence shows vaccines can be more harmful to society than good. But relying on a 1905 decision from the U.S. Supreme Court, the Second Circuit explained that such a determination is "for the legislature, not the individual objectors" to make. Mandatory vaccination is within a state's police power, and individual liberties do not overcome a state's judgment that such a mandate is in the interest of the population as a whole.
The Second Circuit noted that prior decision did not address a Free Exercise challenge. However, subsequent pronouncements by the U.S. Supreme Court indicate that a parent's "right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or the child to communicable disease or the latter to ill health or death." Accordingly, the immunization mandate, as a condition for public school admission and attendance, does not violate the Free Exercise Clause. Furthermore, New York's religious exemption goes beyond what the federal Constitution requires. Because the state could constitutionally bar unimmunized children from school altogether, the "limited exclusion" of such children "during an outbreak of a vaccine-preventable disease is clearly constitutional."