Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch is taking aim at the legal root of law involving vaccinations, abortion rights, and birth control.
According to Law & Crime, Gorsuch’s comments came as the high court blocked New York Governor Andrew Cuomo from reimposing strict capacity limits on New York City synagogues and Roman Catholic churches, saying rules he issued amid a new COVID-19 wave unfairly single out houses of worship.
Gorsuch was one of the justices siding with the majority in the decision, while Chief Justice John Roberts joined the minority.
According to Law & Crime, he backhanded Roberts for relying on a 1905 case seen by many as the pillar of public health law. That case, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, allowed a city’s forced immunization schedule to stand against a reverend who did not want to get a smallpox vaccination.
Gorsuch wrote: “Mr. Jacobson claimed that he possessed an implied “substantive due process” right to “bodily integrity” that emanated from the Fourteenth Amendment and allowed him to avoid not only the vaccine but also the $5 fine (about $140 today) and the need to show he qualified for an exemption.
“Finally, consider the different nature of the restriction. In Jacobson, individuals could accept the vaccine, pay the fine, or identify a basis for exemption. The imposition on Mr. Jacobson’s claimed right to bodily integrity, thus, was avoidable and relatively modest.”
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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