North Carolina’s Supreme Court has given the green light for a family to sue a school district that administered the COVID-19 shot to their son without consent.
The majority-conservative court’s 5-2 ruling last Friday allows mom Emily Happel’s suit against a Guilford County high school, which jabbed her then-14-year-old son Tanner Smith in August 2021, to move forward, reversing an appeals court’s previous decision halting the lawsuit citing the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act.
In his majority opinion, North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby dismissed the appeals court’s PREP Act argument and upheld the mother’s right to make medical decisions on behalf of her son.
“[W]e are tasked with considering whether Congress intended the PREP Act to immunize state actors who forcibly vaccinate a child without his or his parent’s consent, thereby committing a battery and infringing their fundamental rights under the state constitution,” North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby wrote in his majority opinion.
“The PREP Act’s plain text leads us to conclude that its immunity only covers tort injuries. Because tort injuries are not constitutional violations, the PREP Act does not bar plaintiffs’ constitutional claims,” Newby wrote, according to The Carolina Journal.
“First, we agree that the state constitution protects a parent’s right to control her child’s upbringing, including her right to make medical decisions on her child’s behalf,” Newby continued.
“[T]he constitutional right to full ‘custody and control’ over one’s minor children would ring hollow if it did not include the right to consent on the child’s behalf, as well as the right to seek a constitutional remedy when the State disregards the absence of that consent… Our state constitution and caselaw have long implied the existence of the precise right plaintiffs claim here. We directly recognize it today.”
“[W]e agree that the Law of the Land Clause protects the right to bodily integrity, which we define as the right of a competent person to refuse forced, nonmandatory medical treatment,” Newby continued.
“[T]he ambiguity of the PREP Act’s language requires us to consider whether Congress intended to include even unconstitutional conduct within the immunity’s broad scope,” the court’s chief justice wrote. “Defendants ask us to adopt this literal reading.”
“Plaintiffs, on the other hand, contend that Congress could not have intended to immunize — indeed, even incentivize — unconstitutional conduct,” Newby wrote, adding, “We agree with plaintiffs.”
“The literalist interpretation defendants urge us to adopt today defies even the broad scope of the statutory text. Under this view, Congress gave carte blanche to any willful misconduct related to the administration of a covered countermeasure, including the State’s deliberate violation of fundamental constitutional rights, so long as it fell short of causing ‘death or serious physical injury.’ … The ramifications of this approach are deeply repugnant to our constitutional traditions and the history of this State and Nation,” he added.
“We hold that the plain text of the PREP Act does not bar claims brought under our state constitution,” concluded the chief justice’s opinion, which the court’s five Republican justices supported.
The court’s two liberal justices dissented, calling the majority court’s “PREP Act and constitutional analyses fundamentally unsound.”
Slay News reports Smith was jabbed despite attempting to protest the shot:
According to the family’s lawsuit, Smith was vaccinated in August 2021 at age 14 despite his opposition at a testing and vaccination clinic at a Guilford County high school.
The lawsuit says the teenager went to the clinic to be tested for COVID-19 after several cases among members of his school’s football team.
He did not anticipate that the clinic would also be administering vaccines.
The teen told staff at the clinic that he did not want a vaccination.
He also didn’t have a signed parental consent form to receive one.
But when the clinic was unable to reach his mother, a worker instructed a colleague to “give it to him anyway,” Happel and Smith claim.
The case will now return to the appeals court to address the constitutional violations in its previous ruling.
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