Right-Wingers Are Winning The War On Vaccines

Anti-vaxxers are using the conservative culture war playbook to make schools less safe for children across the country.

Vaccine skeptics notched another win on Monday: The U.S. Supreme Court overruled a New York’s court decision that had required all school students, in both public and private schools, to be vaccinated with no exemptions for religious beliefs.

In sending the case back to the Second Circuit, the Supreme Court specifically cited that it needed to be reconsidered “in light of” Mahmoud v. Taylor, a case decided earlier this year that allows public school students to opt out of curricula that use books with LGBTQ+ themes because of their religious beliefs.

“The Court has ‘long recognized the rights of parents to direct ‘the religious upbringing’ of their children,” read the majority opinion in that case, written by Justice Samuel Alito. “Those rights are violated by government policies that ‘substantially interfer[e] with the religious development’ of children.”

The Supreme Court didn’t offer any reasoning to send back the New York case beyond its citation of Mahmoud. But it didn’t have to. The court’s move comes at a time when parental rights arguments have begun seeping into public health policy — a favorite conservative stalking horse that has long been used to attack schools. While parental rights arguments have long been part of the anti-vax movement as well, the two versions have begun coming back together in some increasingly ominous ways as the conservative playbook evolves.

Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it was investigating an unnamed school in the Midwest for allegedly illegally vaccinating a child who had a religious exemption on file. The details surrounding the claims are unclear, as HHS did not disclose the names of the school or student nor its precise location. The news also came with a Dear Colleague letter to pediatricians, reminding them about privacy laws.