Illustration by: Sadaat Rafin. Courtesy of: "The Spectator"
According to a study conducted in 2015 in partnership with the Vaccine Confidence Project, 9.6% of the United States population does not think that vaccines are effective and 8.8% of the U.S population does not believe that vaccines are important for children to have. While the United States does mandate that young children are up to date according to the government’s vaccination schedule prior to starting school, all 50 states have some type of exemption available for parents who do not want their children vaccinated.
Forty-five states and Washington, D.C. allow religious exemptions to vaccines and 15 states allow philosophical exemptions that exempt them from immunizations due to personal beliefs, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. These exemptions beg the question: can state or federal government force its citizens to vaccinate themselves?
In the early 1900s, only 11 states had mandatory vaccination laws, which means that these states could enforce mandatory vaccinations if there was a public health issue. Massachusetts was one of these states with a compulsory vaccination law, and in 1902, it was faced with a smallpox outbreak. The state government instituted mandatory vaccinations for all residents over the age of 21. Noncompliance with this mandate resulted in a five dollar fine. A man named Henning Jacobsen, a pastor in Cambridge did not get his vaccine, and he was fined.
Jacobsen did not believe this to be a fair course of action, so he took his case all the way to the Supreme Court. Jacobsen alleged that forced vaccination was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment which states that “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” (National Archives).
In a case that became known as Jacobsen v. Massachusetts, the Supreme Court delivered a 7-2 majority decision that the compulsory vaccination law did not violate the freedoms and rights protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. Additionally, the vaccination law was not oppressive as long as the law remained reasonable and did not overstep its bounds. The Supreme Court ruled that this law was not overstepping bounds, it was simply mandating a smallpox vaccine as a way to quell an outbreak of smallpox - which makes sense.
The Supreme Court upheld this decision in later cases, such as Zucht v. King which allowed a school in San Antonio, Texas to deny admittance to a student who was not up to date on their vaccinations.
This issue is particularly relevant today given the COVID-19 pandemic and the development of a potential vaccine for this disease. Many Americans have stated that once a vaccine becomes available, they will not be getting it. In this situation, the government has a few options; it could leave it up to the states to decide, or the federal government could tax individuals who decide not to vaccinate. Another potential option could be to mandate a vaccine under the commerce clause because COVID-19 travels from state to state, according to an article from Newsweek.
Realistically, the government cannot force anyone to be vaccinated if they do not want to be, but the government can impose consequences if a person chooses not to be vaccinated. If someone chooses not to vaccinate themselves, they have to be willing to accept the consequences of their actions, whether that be a tax, fine or something else.
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