Julie Parrish

In the time since Covid-19 vaccines became available to the American public, it seemed almost a foregone conclusion that state and federal governments, given their extensive use of executive authority and emergency rulemaking powers since the start of the pandemic, would eventually attempt to exercise police powers to mandate compulsory vaccination. What has become questionable is whether there is a rational basis upon which government can justify a wholesale sweep of large sectors of the workforce and student populations into mandated vaccination under the threat of losing employment, education, or public accommodation access. As the pandemic has evolved, the government’s rationale for compulsory vaccination, to achieve herd immunity and stop the spread of Covid-19, is no longer compelling. Data reflects that Covid-19 is moving towards endemic status, and vaccines simply do not stop the transmission of the virus. Moreover, if the goal really is to achieve community levels of protection against Covid-19, then the government’s exclusion of its own past practice of including serological lab testing to prove immunization further demonstrates that compulsory vaccination, especially upon those who can prove natural immunity using laboratory testing, can no longer pass a rational basis test.