This article about California SB276 and fake medical exemptions for vaccines was written by Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, Professor of Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law (San Francisco, CA), who is a frequent contributor to this and many other blogs, providing in-depth, and intellectually stimulating, articles about vaccines, medical issues, social policy, and the law.
Professor Reiss writes extensively in law journals about the social and legal policies of vaccination. Additionally, Reiss is also a member of the Parent Advisory Board of Voices for Vaccines, a parent-led organization that supports and advocates for on-time vaccination and the reduction of vaccine-preventable disease.
If the headline seems obvious, the reason behind it is that the Second District of the California Court of Appeal just ruled on a case in which the claim that California SB276 prevented the juvenile court from overturning a medical exemption was used by a father who did not want his children, in the custody of the state, to be vaccinated.
There are two takeaways from the case. First, a reminder that when children become wards of the state, the state can order appropriate medical care, the kind that responsible parents would provide, including vaccination. Second, a ruling that SB276 added to those with authority to revoke medical exemptions, it did not remove existing authority to do so.Read More »California SB276 – juvenile courts and fake vaccine medical exemption facts