Two weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the eviction moratorium imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as an anti-COVID measure. The reasoning of the court’s opinion, however, would support the CDC if it imposed a vaccine mandate. So also would settled law regarding the states’ authority over public health.
There are many vaccine mandates already in force in America.
Members of the armed forces are subject to mandated COVID vaccinations. Americans over a certain age were, as infants, inoculated against small pox – we have life scars on our arms to prove it.
Every state requires vaccinations against diphtheria, tetanus, “Hib” influenza, measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, polio and pertussis for children to attend childcare, pre-K, kindergarten and elementary schools. Since attendance at elementary school is a government mandate on the entire population (home schooling is a limited exception), these vaccine requirements for attending school are effectively compulsory vaccine mandates.
Similarly, every immigrant to the United States must be vaccinated against 14 communicable diseases, including measles, mumps, rubella, and “seasonal influenza.” Immigrants crossing America’s border to seek asylum have been released, pending their hearings, into the general U.S. population without vaccinations, threatening U.S. citizens and legal residents with the spread of many diseases including COVID.
It is anomalous that some politicians who have criticized the Biden administration over this immigration policy also oppose a COVID vaccine mandate. Whether they are asylum-seekers or legal residents, unvaccinated individuals will spread infectious disease is a legitimate risk that mandatory vaccinations can control for.
States have the authority to order vaccine mandates under their police powers, a category of authority reserved to the states under the 10th Amendment.
In 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld…