I believe this was meant as opinion, not a statement of law. Nevertheless, the law is consistent with this view. States can carve out religious exemptions, but they are not required to do so under the U.S. Constitution.
There's an old adage to the effect that your right to swing your fists ends just where my nose begins. Or, more broadly, my liberty ends where yours begins.
>>>As vaccination developments evolved, the law did, too. Britain was the first country to mandate vaccines in 1853, requiring babies to be inoculated against smallpox. Two years later, Massachusetts became the first state to use its police powers to require smallpox vaccinations. When, some 50 years later during a smallpox outbreak, the vaccination requirement was challenged, the U.S. Supreme Court in
Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905) held that there is no constitutional right for every person to be free of every restraint; rather, all persons, as a condition of citizenry, could be subjected to some form of restraint for the public good. Accordingly, the country’s first objection to mandatory vaccination was defeated.
Almost two decades later, the Supreme Court in
Zucht v. King (1922) upheld a Texas school exclusion law that denied school enrollment to unvaccinated children. And in 1944,
the Supreme Court in Prince v. Massachusetts (1944) again made clear that the state’s interest in public safety takes priority over religious freedom and the right to family privacy. Thus, time and again, the use of a state’s police power to uphold public health has taken priority over the right to privacy or to religious freedom or to education. Accordingly, over the next several decades, because of the ease, speed, and deadly consequences of disease transmission in schools, every single state came to enact some form of mandatory vaccination requirement, along with a school exclusion sanction for unvaccinated children. . . .
Religious exemptions. Most states also provide a religious exemption, though five currently do not: California, Maine, Mississippi, West Virginia, and now New York, which eliminated religious exemptions this year in response to a massive measles outbreak believed to have originated in religious communities in Brooklyn and other New York counties. Numerous other states are following suit by considering legislative reforms to end their own religious exemptions. <<<
Recent measles outbreaks across the country have fueled new debate about vaccines and renewed interest in vaccination law, especially as it concerns children.
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