A small group of students enrolled at Indiana University sued to block that university's requirement that all students be vaccinated. They lost in their first two attempts -- and they will lose, even though their "emergency" petition for a TRO was placed into ultra-conservative Supreme Court Justice Barrett's inbox on this past Friday afternoon.
Seventh Circuit Judge Frank Easterbrook most recently wrote a short, but powerful panel opinion explaining why public universities, and by extension, the government itself, possess clearly delineated power to mandate vaccines -- ever since the Supreme's smallpox case holdings, of 1905.
. . .Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905). . . holds that a state may require all members of the public to be vaccinated against smallpox, [so] there can't be a constitutional problem with vaccination against SARS-CoV-2. Plaintiffs assert that the rational-basis standard used in Jacobson does not offer enough protection for their interests and that courts should not be as deferential to the decisions of public bodies as Jacobson was, but a court of appeals must apply the law established by the Supreme Court.
Plaintiffs invoke substantive due process. Under Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 720-22 (1997), and other decisions, such an argument depends on the existence of a fundamental right ingrained in the American legal tradition. Yet Jacobson, which sustained a criminal conviction for refusing to be vaccinated, shows that plaintiffs lack such a right. To the contrary, vaccination requirements, like other public-health measures, have been common in this nation. . . .
A university will have trouble operating when each student fears that everyone else may be spreading disease. Few people want to return to remote education -- and we do not think that the Constitution forces the distance-learning approach on a university that believes vaccination (or masks and frequent testing of the unvaccinated) will make in-person operations safe enough.
The motion for an injunction pending appeal is denied. . . .
[We run a now more than year old graphic at above right, from when the dreaded virus really took off -- in lethality -- as a reminder. It was completely foreseeable that we would be here, now -- over 700,000 dead. Yet the prior administration failed to act in any form of a forceful, or coordinated manner, to stem that horrific tide of deaths. In fact, it thwarted science-based attempts to deal with the virus.]
So it goes. . . a busy next few weeks ahead, with cross-country travel scheduled across the West (for sports-injury surgery my son now needs), and a brother's long delayed memorial -- one that has waited 18 months to unfold, due to COVID restrictions (so I may be scarcer than usual here, until mid-September). But. . . onward; ever onward.
I trust you all will keep it spinnin' in good karma.
नमस्ते
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