News reports are punctuated regularly by echoes from the great COVID-19 pandemic: monkeypox is on the rise; bird flu is in cows … or humans … or Canadian swine. The COVID-19 panic that disrupted the global economy is in the rearview mirror, but the prospect of another pandemic raises important questions about civil rights. A recent Vermont Supreme Court decision has upped that future ante, ruling that public school officials are free to inject children with experimental vaccines with impunity.
Six-year-old Leo Politella was administered an experimental COVID-19 shot in 2021 at a clinic at his Vermont public school despite his vocal protests that he was not supposed to be vaccinated, and specific assurances from school officials to his parents that he would not be. Vermont’s Governor Phil Scott announced monetary “awards” for schools that achieved high vaccination rates, adding more distrust to an already unconscionable situation. The Politellas had specifically informed the school their son was not to be vaccinated, and he was jabbed anyway. The school demonstrated zero accountability and could not explain who was responsible.
The Politellas withdrew their son from the public school and brought suit for this gross dereliction of trust. The Vermont court system inflicted a second assault when its highest court agreed with the Vermont Attorney General (who sided not with the child but with the incompetent or corrupt school officials) that their claims were barred by the federal PREP Act, which authorizes emergency vaccines and grants immunity to manufacturers. The Politellas did not sue a pharmaceutical company, nor did they claim injury from the vaccine. The injury inflicted was the government violating their traditional rights to medical decision-making.
As the Federal District Court for the Ninth Circuit recently observed (Judge Daniel Collins, concurring):
….“[t]he principle that a competent person has a constitutionally protected liberty interest in refusing unwanted medical treatment may be inferred from [the Court’s] prior decisions.” Cruzan ex rel. Cruzan v. Director, Mo. Dep’t of Health, 497 U.S. 261, 278–79 (1990) (citing, not only Jacobson, but a series of later “cases support[ing] the recognition of a general liberty interest in refusing medical treatment”). In Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702 (1997), the Court explained that Cruzan’s posited “‘right of a competent individual to refuse medical treatment’” was “entirely consistent with this Nation’s history and constitutional traditions,” in light of “the common-law rule that forced medication was a battery, and the long legal tradition protecting the decision to refuse unwanted medical treatment.” Id. at 724–25 (citation omitted).
Had Vermont school officials force-jabbed Leo with DPT or a measles shot, his family would possess all of the normal legal protections enunciated by Judge Collins. Yet the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that this child and his family, and thus all Vermont school children, are denied those traditional protections for an experimental product that was less tested. Congress did not include any language in the PREP Act indicating an intent to eliminate established parent-child liberties or rights to informed patient consent. The elimination of such protections has no bearing on the immunities from product liability extended to Big Pharma by the PREP Act and does not interfere in any way with that immunity. A law intended to insulate vaccine manufacturers has been perversely extended to instead immunize grossly errant public officials from accountability to their citizen charges.
Vermont’s decision is anathema to Americans’ liberties and a horrible precedent for future disease outbreaks. Why should school officials be concerned about vaccinating children without consent when they are legally shielded from any accountability? By denying the Politellas any legal recourse, the Vermont Supreme Court issued a de facto ruling that public school officials can do what they want – even deliberately jabbing a child is protected by this shocking ruling, so long as it does not cause serious bodily injury or death. Even then, the sole recourse for parents would be the PREP Act, which severely curtails recovery, and does not allow for any action for traditional state tort laws. Americans can add public school hesitancy to vaccine hesitancy as their trust in medical and educational institutions understandably continues to erode.
The Politellas are appealing this terrible precedent to the United States Supreme Court, asserting the Vermont courts erred by extending federal PREP Act immunity to preempt state common law and statutory protections by injured children and their families. The Politellas were interviewed for a brief video of their experience in an appeal for support for legal fees.
Leo Politella is not the only child who has suffered this intrusion: other children around the nation were given COVID-19 injections against their parents’ wishes. This family will be heard, if not in court, then in the media. I am their attorney before the US Supreme Court. I wish all Americans to hear of their ordeal so that others are not threatened with similar experiences from an unaccountable government.
