In an interview on “The Defender In-Depth,” Vermont attorney John Klar warned of potentially grave consequences for medical autonomy if a recent Vermont Supreme Court ruling is allowed to stand.
The case, Politella v. Windham Southeast School District, revolved around a 6-year-old boy who was administered a COVID-19 vaccination despite his objections and his parents’ communication, in advance, to the school that he was not to be vaccinated.
The July 26 ruling held that the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act) shielded school officials from “all state-law claims … as a matter of law.”
“This is a particularly shocking case,” Klar said, “because it shows us an extreme result that I don’t think either Congress or the American people want. And so, it should not be allowed to stand, and it draws people’s attention to understand what the laws are that apply to these vaccines that are being injected into our bodies.”
Klar discussed the ruling, its implications and possible next steps, as well as potential legal and judicial remedies regarding the PREP Act’s liability shield.
Usurping parents’ wishes ‘clearly not the intention of Congress’ with PREP Act
Klar said the facts of the case “are pretty simple” — the child’s parents had communicated to the school during the pandemic that they did not want their child vaccinated with any of the vaccines on offer.
But at a school vaccination clinic, someone vaccinated the child anyway, while distracting him with a stuffed animal.
“What the Vermont court has done is, it said that because the PREP Act was passed, and that’s federal law and it preempts state law, that any parental consent rights or any other rights that a person might have, aside from recovering for death or serious bodily injury for willfully giving you the shot, are foreclosed forever,” Klar said.
Klar said the PREP Act provides “virtually limitless” liability protection to corporations for products like vaccines. He argued that when such products are administered to children though, there “should be a very high standard of safety.”
The 6-year-old in Vermont wasn’t injured, which Klar said “is relevant to this case” because the sole remedy offered under the PREP Act is in “cases of serious bodily injury.”
Klar said usurping parents’ wishes “was clearly not the intention of Congress” when passing the PREP Act. “This interpretation highlights either a flaw in the PREP Act that needs to be addressed or a glaring problem for parents of children who now may not just have vaccine hesitancy but hesitancy to allow their children in a school” that administers vaccines.
“We’re left with a situation where the government would say, ‘Well, no, we’ve never ruled that the government can go ahead and give your child a shot when you don’t want them to. We’ve just ruled that if they do that, they have no liability,’” Klar said.
According to Klar, attorneys for the plaintiffs in the Vermont case “are moving for a rehearing with the Vermont court” but it is uncertain whether they plan to appeal to a federal court.
He said he would be willing to work with these plaintiffs and others to help appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
‘PREP Act does not supersede federal guarantees of our Constitution’
The Vermont ruling raises key constitutional questions, according to Klar, who said:
“The PREP Act does not supersede federal guarantees of our Constitution. … Those protections still stand, and that I think is the battle before us: Where does our Constitution fit to protect us from federal or state legislation that transcends against our fundamental rights to privacy and bodily autonomy and parental consent for decisions affecting our children?”
Klar noted that even a seminal U.S. Supreme Court decision, Jacobson v. Massachusetts — a 1905 decision that pro-vaccine advocates argue justifies government vaccine mandates — recognized such constitutional rights.
“Jacobson’s very relevant,” Klar said. “It is the highest law in the land, among some other cases, relating to vaccines. It does not hold that the government can give me a vaccine against my wishes. The case held that the government could give a person a vaccine against their wishes or compel them to pay a $5 fine.”
Drawing a distinction between smallpox and COVID-19, Klar noted that the Jacobson decision “concerns smallpox, a very virulent disease with a high mortality rate for an attenuated virus vaccine that was established to be quite effective.”
“That court went to very careful consideration in a lengthy opinion, quite in contrast with Vermont’s, to … explain why this was a very important interference by the government into your rights in order to stop a very deadly disease,” Klar said.
Since the Jacobson decision, courts have not developed a legal standard for weighing the severity of a health emergency, Klar said.
“This raises the question, what is the standard today in 2024?” Klar asked.
He said:
“Where’s the balance? Can the government institute a compulsory vaccination for monkeypox, for hepatitis B for diseases that by their definition are related to a particular type of conduct or maybe a particular age group?
“We don’t even have a legal standard in America right now in 2024 to tell us under the PREP Act … because it is bound by the U.S. Constitution, what level of disease, threat or mortality, and to how many people [does] the government have to demonstrate before it has the power to launch novel vaccines at the behest of Big Pharma.”
Klar also suggested that courts should assess other issues, including whether the vaccines are experimental, if the vaccines don’t work as advertised and if the vaccines cause adverse events or cause you to die suddenly.
The courts have been “reluctant to engage in … scientific factual analysis,” he said.
This article was funded by critical thinkers like you.
The Defender is 100% reader-supported. No corporate sponsors. No paywalls. Our writers and editors rely on you to fund stories like this that mainstream media won’t write.
Parental rights have been ‘jettisoned’
Klar also referred to the World Health Organization’s proposed “pandemic treaty,” noting that if it is passed, the U.S. government may use it to strip further constitutional rights and protections as they pertain to health.
“The pandemic treaty, if passed, would be used by our federal government to deny the constitutional liberties they already want to take away.” In doing so, the U.S. government may claim that it is merely “complying with the treaty.”
Klar said congressional action might serve as a potential solution for “parental rights that have just been jettisoned” via the PREP Act. “That might be our best remedy … It’s a quick fix.”
But Klar added, “At some point, we have to get this case or another before the U.S. Supreme Court to … overrule what’s been done by this court and say, ‘no, that was not intended by Congress.’”
Watch ‘The Defender In-Depth’ here:
Listen to the podcast on Spotify.
‘The Defender In-Depth’ airs each Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET/9 a.m. CT on CHD.TV.
