Trio of GOP-Appointed Judges Unanimously Approve Indiana University’s Vaccine Mandate: ‘There Can’t Be a Constitutional Problem With Vaccination’ – By Jerry Lambe (Law and Crime) / Aug 2 2021
Pointing to Supreme Court precedent that has endured for longer than a century, a panel of Republican-appointed federal appellate court judges on Monday refused to stop Indiana University from enforcing its mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy ahead of the upcoming semester. The inoculation requirements are constitutionally permissible and commonplace public safety measures, the judges found.
Writing for the unanimous three-judge panel on the Chicago-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Circuit Judge Frank Easterbrook, an appointee of Ronald Reagan, rejected the request of eight students who sought to block the measure from going into effect. Easterbrook emphatically shot down the students’ claims in the four-page ruling, repeatedly citing the Supreme Court’s landmark 1905 case finding state-enforced vaccine mandates to be legal.
“Given Jacobson v. Massachusetts, which holds that a state may require all members of the public to be vaccinated against smallpox, there can’t be a constitutional problem with vaccination against [COVID],” Easterbrook wrote, adding, “To the contrary, vaccination requirements, like other public health measures, have been common in this nation.”
The ruling—which was joined by Donald Trump-appointed Circuit Judges Michael Y. Scudder and Thomas Lee Kirsch (Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s successor on the Seventh Circuit)—affirmed a lower district court decision issued last month.
