the First Amendment – The Health Care Blog

The Vaccine Brawl – A Legal Battle in Process

Oct 6, 2021

By MIKE MAGEE

The power to mandate vaccines was litigated and resolved over a century ago. Justice John Marshall Harlin, a favorite of current Chief Justice Roberts, penned the 7 to 2 majority opinion in 1905’s Jacobson v. Massachusetts. Its impact was epic.

In 1905, Massachusetts was one of 11 states that required compulsory vaccinations. The Rev. Henning Jacobson, a Lutheran minister, challenged the city of Cambridge, MA, which had passed a local law requiring citizens to undergo smallpox vaccination or pay a $5 fine. Jacobson and his son claimed they had previously had bad reactions to the vaccine and refused to pay the fine believing the government was denying them their due process XIV Amendment rights.

In deciding against them, Harlan wrote, “liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own [liberty]…”

Of course, a state’s right to legislate compulsory public health measures does not require them to do so. In fact, as we have seen in Texas and Florida among others, they may decide to do just the opposite – declare life-saving mandates (for masks or vaccines) to be unlawful. At least 14 states have passed laws barring employer and school vaccine mandates and imposing penalties in Republican-controlled states already.

So state powers are clearly a double-edged sword when it comes to health care.

Questions anyone?

First Amendment Doesn’t Apply to Junk Food Marketing

Feb 27, 2012• 11

By SAMANTHA GRAFF

Every year food and soft drink marketers spend billions of dollars tempting children with junk, fueling an obesity crisis that’s already reached epidemic proportions.

Why aren’t policymakers stepping in to help protect our kids? In part because food and media companies are successfully using the First Amendment as a shield.

But new research paves the way for government to take action to protect children from junk food marketing, building a strong case to establish that much of this advertising falls outside the scope of First Amendment protection.

The controversy over whether government has the right to regulate food marketing to kids came to a head last summer, after a group of federal agencies proposed a set of voluntary recommendations suggesting how food companies could market to kids more responsibly. Food, entertainment and advertising lobbyists launched a massive campaign to derail the recommendations, arguing that the First Amendment protects industry from any government action involving food marketing to children.