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The court ruled that the PREP Act, which provides liability coverage for vaccines, only covers losses under tort law — not the intentional deprivations of a parent’s or student’s state and federal constitutional rights.
The Supreme Court of North Carolina ruled last week that the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act does not provide immunity for willful violations of fundamental constitutional rights.
The school listed three locations that players could go to for a free COVID test, one of which was a clinic hosted at the school that was operated in partnership with Old North State Medical Society (ONSMS). The letter the school sent did not disclose that this location provided testing as well as vaccinations.
Soon after, Tanner Smith, who was 14 at the time, was driven to the clinic by his stepfather, who was waiting outside in the car while Smith went in to be tested.
Inside the clinic, workers wanted to give Smith the vaccine, but Smith did not have a signed parental consent form. They called his mother but were unable to get in touch with her. The workers did not bother to speak with Smith’s stepfather who was outside. One worker said, “give it to [Smith] anyway.”
The workers ignored Smith when he said he did not want the vaccine and only wanted to be tested and then “forcibly injected him with the first dose of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.”
Smith and his mother filed a lawsuit against the school board and ONSMS for battery and violations of their state and federal constitutional rights.
The defendants claimed that they were given immunity under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, which protects organizations against lawsuits and liability under federal and state law concerning “claims for loss caused by, arising out of, relating to, or resulting from the administration to or the use by an individual of a covered countermeasure.”
The trial court ruled in favor of the board and ONSMS. The State Court of Appeals also determined that the board and ONSMS were granted immunity.
However, the North Carolina Supreme Court reversed both decisions and ruled that the PREP Act does not grant immunity for willful violations of constitutional rights.
While the court of appeals cited examples of accidental violations, such as a patient seeking a flu shot and a practitioner mistakenly administering a COVID vaccine, this was not an accident.
The state supreme court wrote that a “literalist” interpretation of the statute giving immunity to any and every government actor for any violation is not what Congress meant when it passed the PREP Act.
“Under this view, Congress gave carte blanche to any willful misconduct related to the administration of a covered countermeasure, including the State’s deliberate violation of fundamental constitutional rights, so long as it fell short of causing ‘death or serious physical injury,’” the court wrote, adding,
“The ramifications of this approach are deeply repugnant to our constitutional traditions and the history of this State and Nation. 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.’ 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 court also argued that under the PREP Act, the Secretary for Health and Human Services (HHS) “controls the scope” of immunity when he issues an emergency declaration. Immunity is only extended to the activities the Secretary states. HHS Secretary Alex Azar wrote that “countermeasures” were protected if the means were “voluntary.”
In addition, the court found that the plaintiffs’ claims were distinct from the “claims for loss” that the PREP Act grants immunity for.
The judges ruled that the “loss” Congress provided immunity for was tort loss, meaning Congress only intended to provide protection against claims of civil liability, not for violations of constitutional rights.
“Loss under tort law, though serious in its own right, is not equivalent to loss in the constitutional sense. Tort law protects the people from each other under a system of sometimes arbitrary rules created by judges over a span of centuries. In contrast, the state constitution protects the people from their government, according to an order of natural rights far older than the document itself,” the judges ruled, explaining,
“Indeed, as we detailed at length earlier in this opinion, the seriousness of a run-of-the-mill battery claim pales in comparison to the State’s deliberate deprivation of one’s fundamental constitutional liberties. Because ordinary tort loss is distinct from constitutional loss, the tort-based examples included in the PREP Act suggest that Congress did not intend for the immunity to block state constitutional claims. Therefore, when the statute defines loss as ‘any type of loss,’ it means any type of tortious injury: physical injury, property damage, loss of use, and so on. Although that definition encompasses plaintiffs’ battery claim, it does not cover their claims under the state constitution.”
The case will be remanded to lower courts for further discussion.
Several other state supreme courts, including for Vermont and Maine, have ruled against parents on this issue. One of those cases has since been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The PREP Act has provided far too much immunity for far too many. Under emergency authorization, pharmaceutical companies that make faulty drugs or vaccines or doctors who administer or recommend these faulty drugs and vaccines are protected from any consequences.
As the lower court of appeals pointed out in its opinion, some have even been given immunity after administering the wrong vaccine because the vaccine was covered by emergency declaration.
This case goes beyond that, however. This was a clinic run at the school that forcibly injected a teenager with an experimental vaccine against his wishes and without parental consent or even notification.
Every medical worker knows it is illegal to force someone to be vaccinated with a non-mandatory injection against their wishes.
Every school and medical worker knows (or they should know) that parental consent is needed for children to receive a vaccine.
However, many schools across America willfully injected children with the COVID vaccine without parental consent or notification, sometimes by bribing children, by subtly manipulating them, or by simply telling them they have no choice in the matter.
The North Carolina Supreme Court got this decision right, where other courts have not. Schools, government officials, and medical workers cannot be permitted to force medical treatment on children against their wishes and without parental consent.
Hopefully this ruling is the first of many that will finally hold those in power accountable for violating the civil liberties of far too many parents and their children during the COVID pandemic. It’s long past time for that reckoning.
Many K-12 schools now embrace the secular woke agenda and are hostile to Christian beliefs and parental rights. Fortunately, parents don’t have to settle for this. Liberty University Online Academy is a K-12 program designed to educate your children in the ways of the Lord while preparing them to stand firm in their faith when they graduate. Our flexible online curriculum ensures that your student is trained at your convenience and keeps YOU the ultimate educator of your children.
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