Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act offers blanket immunity to health providers who jab children without parental consent, according to N.C. appeals court.
A North Carolina Court of Appeals found that a clinic whose personnel gave a 14-year-old boy a COVID-19 shot without his or his parents’ consent was protected by the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act).
The court unanimously ruled in March against Tanner Smith and his mother’s constitutional rights despite calling the act of forcing the child to get a COVID-19 jab against his will “egregious.”
From The Vaccine Reaction:
Despite calling the act of forcing a child to get a COVID-19 shot against his will and without his parent’s consent, “egregious,” the court unanimously concluded that the PREP Act preempted state law and protected the defendants from being held liable for battery, violation of Tanner’s mother’s constitutional liberty and parental rights, and violation of Tanner’s bodily autonomy and plaintiffs’ federal constitutional rights.
The incident began in 2021 after the Western Guilford High School in Greensboro, North Carolina sent a letter to Tanner’s parents claiming that unless he got tested for SARS-CoV-2, he would not be able to “return to football practice until cleared by a public health professional.”
The letter went on to say the school would be hosting a free clinic that offers COVID testing, adding that “consent for testing is required.”
Then things took a turn for the worse.
The following day, Tanner’s step-father took him to the clinic at the local school for the free testing so that Tanner could return to football practice. The school district failed to inform the parents that a there was also a free vaccination clinic along with the free testing at the school that same day. While Tanner’s step-father waited in the car, Tanner filled out a form that he believed was for the free testing needed to return to football practice. At that time, one of the clinic workers attempted to reach out to Tanner’s mother but she was not available. Tanner’s step-father who was waiting outside the clinic was not called.
Tanner made it clear to the the clinic workers that he was there for a COVID-19 test and not for the COVID shot and that he did not want a shot. However, one of the clinic workers was heard to have said, “give it to him anyway.” Despite his protest and the clinic’s failure to get parental consent, Tanner was given a Pfizer/BioNTech Comirnaty COVID shot.
Tanner and his mother sued the school district and the vaccine clinic alleging battery, violation of Tanner’s mother’s constitutional liberty and parental rights, violation of Tanner’s bodily autonomy and violation of plaintiffs’ federal constitutional rights.
But the trial court dismissed their complaint in 2023 due to the PREP Act shielding the defendants.
The Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s decision last month, claiming that although N.C. state law requires a healthcare provider to obtain written consent from a parent before administering any vaccine to a minor, the PREP Act “preempts” state law.
“Its intent is to prevent the egregious conduct alleged in the case before us, and to safeguard the constitutional rights at issue—Emily’s parental right to the care and control of her child, and Tanner’s right to individual liberty,” the court wrote. “Notwithstanding, the statute remains explicitly subject to ‘any other provision of law to the contrary’ under the broad provision preempting state law in the PREP Act.”
The PREP Act, which began in 2005, states that the Secretary of Health and Human Services may recommend the use of one or more countermeasures after declaring that a disease, health condition or threat to public health constitutes an emergency.
In that case, a healthcare provider covered by the countermeasures “shall be immune from suit and liability.”
“To further define who was covered or granted immunity under the PREP Act, the Secretary set forth a declaration on Mar. 17, 2020 that defined ‘covered persons’ as including, ‘manufacturers, distributors, program planners, and qualified persons, and their officials, agents, and employees, and the United States,’” The Vaccine Reaction reported.
“Bound by the broad scope of immunity provided by the PREP Act, we are constrained to hold it shields Defendants, under the facts of this case, from Plaintiffs’ claims relating to the administration of the COVID-19 vaccine,” the court ruled.
Eight Republican state House members urged the North Carolina Supreme Court in a legal brief on Friday to take the case.
“They have a special interest in protecting the fundamental rights of the parents they represent and for whom the General Assembly has recently enacted legislation on the very subject embraced by this appeal,” wrote Tyler Brooks of the Thomas More Society, who represents the eight legislators.
“Love the COVID-19 vaccines or despise them. Either way those sentiments are irrelevant to resolution of the legal questions here presented,” according to the legislators’ brief.
“On its underlying merits, this case instead offers up two interrelated questions that are far more foundational to our republican form of government: (1) whether, as this Court and the U.S. Supreme Court have repeatedly held, parents have a fundamental constitutional right to direct the care, custody, and control of their children; and (2) whether a state can have the very local governmental entities it has created commandeered by the federal government to serve ends directly contrary to the express statutory directives of the Legislature,” the brief continued.
“Unfortunately, the opinion that the panel of the Court of Appeals below felt constrained to issue subverts basic tenets of federalism and fundamental parental rights by permitting rogue action by local bodies and their agents to escape meaningful regulation by state government,” lawmakers argued.
Emergency health decrees imposed by unelected bureaucrats should not trump constitutional rights and bodily autonomy in a free country.
Read the ruling:
