RALEIGH, N.C. (Legal Newsline) - The North Carolina Supreme Court won't stop the parents of a then-14-year-old vaccinated against COVID-19 against his will, despite a federal law that shields defendants from liability during health emergencies.
The Court ruled on March 21 that the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act does dismiss claims for battery but not state constitution violations, like a right to control a child's upbringing and the child's right to their bodily autonomy.
The decision overturned lower court rulings and drew a dissent from Justice Allison Riggs, who called the majority reasoning "a series of dizzying inversions."
"(I)t explicitly rewrites an unambiguous statute to exclude state constitutional claims from the broad and inclusive immunity 'from suit and liability under federal and state law with respect to all claims for loss' established by the (PREP Act)," Riggs wrote.
Western Guilford High School noticed a COVID cluster among its football team in August 2021 and suspended all team activities. It sent players to Old North State Medical Society for free tests but did not explain it was also providing vaccines.
Teen Tanner Smith did not want to be vaccinated and told the clinic so. Instead, it attempted to call his mother Emily Happel to obtain permission but failed to reach her.
One worker said "give it to him anyway" and didn't consult Smith's step-father, who was outside in the parking lot.
"Ignoring additional protests from Smith himself, the workers forcibly injected him with the first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine," Justice Paul Newby wrote for the majority.
The ensuing lawsuit claimed battery and violations of state and federal constitutional rights. Armed with protections under the PREP Act, both the district and Old North State Medical Society successfully argued for dismissal of all claims at the trial court and the Court of Appeals.
The PREP Act covers countermeasures used during public health emergencies. The plaintiffs agreed they do not have a right to disobey a vaccine mandate but one wasn't in place. The defendants never argued the vaccination of Smith was necessary to protect the health of the general public.
Instead, the defendants noted the only stated exception from liability under the PREP Act is for death or serious injury caused by willful misconduct.
"Defendants' interpretation would permit a state actor to vaccinate an unconscious patient, or a public school nurse to deliberately exaggerate the efficacy of a medical treatment to secure a parent's 'consent,'" Justice Newby wrote.
"According to this literalist reading, both scenarios would be covered because neither led to death or serious physical injury. The fundamental and paramount constitutional rights to bodily integrity and parental control would be discarded without second thought.
"That simply cannot be what Congress intended."
The dissenting Riggs thinks the majority opinion is not what Congress intended. The state constitutional claims of bodily integrity and raising children are arbitrarily defined and applied arbitrarily, respectively, she said.
"In the first of many backflips, the majority starts by assuming - and then, questionably, by announcing - the existence of two unenumerated state constitutional rights..." she wrote.
"Indeed, it is not possible to square the majority's reading with the purposes of the PREP Act and the almost uniformly broad language used to effectuate it," she added.
"Allowing plaintiffs to skirt around the immunity granted by the PREP Act by simply recasting their otherwise-preempted claims as state constitutional injuries would create a glaring loophole that undermines the very protections Congress intended to provide."
Justice Anita Earls, a former civil rights attorney, joined the dissent.