Good news for those of us who want to stop vaccine-preventable diseases – the German government has backed a bill for a mandatory measles vaccine for all children entering school or kindergarten. I’m sure the science-denying anti-vaccine crowd in Germany… Read More »German government backs mandatory measles vaccine – anti-vaxxers weep
The locations of the current US measles outbreak (or epidemic) was predicted by researchers in an article recently published in Lancet Infectious Diseases. The amazingly prescient predictions were not based on magic, but on a scientific analysis of two factors – the vaccination rate and international travel tendencies by county in the United States.
And the statistical website, Five Thirty-Eight, took the predictions and listed out what happened during this US measles outbreak. The predictions were spot on.
Time to look at this study and its predicted results.
Read More »Predicting US measles outbreak – vaccine uptake and international travel
If you’re a regular reader of this blog or are just generally aware of current issues regarding vaccinations, you know that Governor Jerry Brown of California signed SB 277 into law. The law removes so-called “personal belief exemptions” for vaccinating children before they enter schools.
Personal belief exemptions were used (and frequently abused) by parents in California to exempt their children from vaccinations using religious beliefs (hardly any mainstream religion is opposed to vaccinations) or the “I don’t like vaccines” belief statement. So many California children were not fully vaccinated, especially when they were clustered in certain areas of the state, lead to several outbreaks of measles, whooping cough, and other infectious diseases.
Thus, the California Senate, led by Senator and Dr. Richard Pan, voted for SB 277, which sailed through the California Senate and Assembly, subsequently becoming law. Its sole purpose was to protect the children of California, the country’s most populous and wealthiest state, from ravages of diseases that were once on the verge of extinction.
Despite the overwhelming support from the legislature and citizens of the state, some groups remain steadfastly opposed. One trope being pushed is doubts about the constitutionality of mandatory vaccinations for children.
Even a group of lawyers wrote a letter to the California legislature, “Statement of Lawyers Opposed to California SB 277,” that tries to deny the constitutionality of mandatory vaccinations for children. The letter concludes:
…we strongly urge you to decline the temptation to tamper with California’s legislative scheme that works to achieve public health objectives while protecting the rights of individuals to make conscientious medical decisions regarding their own health.
Please take the responsible course by rejecting SB 277 and avoiding the legal, educational, and health decision-making chaos that would follow from enactment of this legislation.
The letter is signed by over 150 attorneys but appeared to be written by one Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, a famous attorney with a long history of playing “fast and loose” with the science regarding vaccines. Last month, this blog’s good friend, Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, who spends most of her time (as far as I can tell) writing about legal issues with vaccines, replied to Kennedy’s letter with real science, real constitutional law, and real facts.
Read More »Constitutionality of mandatory vaccinations – Robert F Kennedy Jr. is wrong
Annually, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publishes reports on vaccine coverage in the country. This year, they produced two reports – one describing vaccine coverage for children 19-35 months old, and a second one discussing vaccination coverage… Read More »Vaccine coverage in USA remains high, but refusal has increased
Since the enactment of California’s SB277, which prevents parents from using religious or personal beliefs to excuse their children from vaccinations, has lead to much higher vaccine uptake rates in California schools. The law still allows medical exemptions, which are medically-related reasons for not vaccinating, such as allergies to ingredients in the vaccine. Unfortunately, this had led to medical exemption abuse in many schools in California.
In California, medical exemptions require a form signed by their doctor stating a valid medical reason for any child to not receive vaccines. Generally, less than 2-3% of children would have medical reasons to not be vaccinated. Moreover, most of these children would only be exempt from a few vaccines, not all of them.Read More »Medical exemption abuse – hurting California’s vaccine uptake
One of the most successful pieces of vaccine legislation in recent years has been SB277 in California, which eliminated personal belief exemptions (PBE), that allowed a parent to exclude a child from immunization requirements for school based on the parent’s personal beliefs, including religious objections. These PBEs had been used and abused by anti-vaccine parents to exempt their school-aged children from most, if not all, vaccines.
Other than California, only West Virginia and Mississippi have such strict prohibitions on these PBEs that they are effectively not allowed as a method to refuse vaccines before a child enters school. But many other states are considering vaccine legislation that could improve vaccine uptake. Unfortunately, there are also states on the other side of the equation that are considering laws that reduce restrictions on personal belief exemptions.
The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), which seems to conflate “information” with misinformation about vaccines, claims that there are 134 vaccine bills being considered in 35 states. I wish!
I thought we would could take a look at current vaccine legislation being considered by various states that could potentially increase vaccine uptake in those states. Then we’ll take a look at those states pushing legislation that might decrease vaccine uptake. This should provide real information about what’s going on with these laws, instead of the alternative facts from the vaccine deniers at NVIC.
Read More »Vaccine legislation in the USA – a state by state analysis
California SB277 makes immunization mandatory for children attending schools in the state by removing personal belief exemptions for vaccination. These personal belief exemptions were abused by parents in pockets of California, causing immunization rates in some communities to fall precipitously. California SB277… Read More »California SB277 expected to drop vaccine preventable disease rates
On 21 November 2016, a new lawsuit attacking SB277, the state’s statute removing the personal belief exemption from immunization requirements, was filed with a federal district court in Riverside (Central District of California, Eastern Division), assigned to Judge Dolly M. Dee. The complaint, like previous lawsuits, faces serious hurdles.
Read More »Attacking SB277 with another lawsuit –Torrey-Love v. State of California
In 2015, California enacted into law a measure, SB277, that eliminated all non-medical vaccine exemptions to required school-entry vaccines. There were a number of factions in opposition to this law. One faction, “Revolt, Revoke, Restore”, hired an attorney, T. Matthew Phillips, who eventually filed an SB277 lawsuit to stop the implementation of law. (Previous coverage of litigation filed by Phillips can be found here.)
This SB277 lawsuit is called Buck v. Smith, or Buck v. California. Tamara Buck is the first of the seven plaintiffs; Karen Smith is the Director of the California Department of Public Health. The suit was first filed in July, 2016, and has been amended three times. In response, the state filed a demurrer. A demurrer is a written response to a complaint filed in a lawsuit which, in effect, pleads for dismissal on the grounds that even if the facts alleged in the complaint were true, there is no legal basis for a lawsuit. In this case, Basically, the court is saying “you have to show it’s unconstitutional to mandate vaccines for school before we ask if vaccines cause harm.”
On 21 October 2016, California superior court judge Gregory Alarcon in LA County sustained – accepted – the demurrer of the state and dismissed the SB277 lawsuit filed by Tamara Buck and seven other plaintiffs without leave to amend. What this means is that even after being amended three times, the complaint at the basis of the lawsuit had been found not to make a valid legal claim, and/or not to have enough facts to support a valid legal claim, or “cause of action.” Unless the trial court’s ruling is overturned on appeal, the Buck lawsuit is now dismissed and will not go forward.
There were two main reasons the complaint failed to meet the standard. First, some of the claims simply go against established jurisprudence; this is a problem any challenge to SB277 will face. Second, in this case, the complaint was not well written or argued.Read More »California SB277 lawsuit – state’s demurrer to Buck v Smith sustained
California enacted SB277 on 1 July 2015. This new law removed the “personal belief exemption” (PBE) to vaccines required for school entry. The law went into effect 1 July 2016. One group filed a suit against SB277 in California courts in May; I discussed that complaint in previous article. This California SB277 lawsuit analysis is about new litigation against SB277 filed in the state. (Note, there is an update to this case, “California SB277 vaccination law – litigation update 1.”)
This second lawsuit, with a different group of plaintiffs, including Ana Whitlow, was filed in a federal district court on 1 July 2016. The suit was brought by several individual plaintiffs and a number of organizational plaintiffs. It contained both state and federal claims, claims on constitutional grounds, and claims that focused on implementation of the act.
As the complaint states, California has had a personal belief exemption from its school immunization requirements since at least the 1960s. The complaint does not note that between 1996-2010, California’s exemption rate increased 380%, from 0.5-2.3%. The increase continued until at least 2014.
While the number never went over 3%, the exemption rate was not evenly distributed: some areas and some schools had much higher rates of PBEs than others, making them hot spots for outbreaks. In 2010, California experienced a dramatic outbreak of pertussis in which ten babies died. Pertussis has continued to circulate at a higher rate than in the past. While the pertussis outbreak was partly the fault of a less effective vaccine, studies repeatedly found that areas with high rates of exemptions were more vulnerable to outbreaks.
In 2014, California had the highest rate of measles since 1994, and the famous 2015 measles outbreak caused even higher numbers. This background led the California Legislature to reconsider its immunization policy – already tightened once, in 2012 – and to decide to remove the personal belief exemption.
Understandably, those influenced by anti-vaccine claims were distressed by the new legislation. These parents evidently feel trapped, caught between a reluctance to vaccinate their children and their desire for their children to access educational opportunities, now closed to them by the new law’s provisions. Hence the lawsuit.
Nevertheless, while you can never be certain how a court will decide, my best assessment is that the plaintiffs’ constitutional claims have very low chances of success. While some of the statutory issues call for interpretation, they won’t lead to the law being struck down. And several of their implementation claims suffer from serious procedural problems.
Note that the discussion here refers both to the content of the complaint itself and the content of the memorandum submitted in support of the Temporary Restraining Order – both together present the plaintiffs’ arguments.
The complaint also tries to reframe the narrative drawing on anti-vaccine factual claims that are either misleading or downright incorrect. My focus in this post is on the legal claims, but I will touch on a few of the counter-factual assertions.Read More »California SB277 lawsuit analysis – anything there?