A mother and son in California have asked the Supreme Court to intervene and let the child back attend school again, saying the state is refusing to allow her a religious exemption to mandatory immunization laws.
The woman, who is using the pseudonym Jane Doe in court documents, said vaccines required by the state are derived from cell lines taken from aborted fetuses. She said that contradicts her religious beliefs.
Starting in January, her son’s school began applying the law and booted him from class. She said the Ventura Unified School District then issued a criminal truancy citation against her in the spring.
“Jane Doe and her son are average people who seek the court’s intervention as a last resort to protect their faith and his future,” the family’s lawyers told the high court in a petition seeking quick intervention.
The issue of vaccinations and aborted fetuses has long roiled religious ethics, with debates over the benefits of vaccines versus moral hazards of benefitting from abortion.
Use of aborted fetal tissue has been described as “commonplace” in testing for medical research and drug development, though experts say Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s claim that the MMR vaccine contains aborted fetal debris is inaccurate.
Jane Doe describes herself as a practicing Christian who holds Judeo-Christian religious beliefs that abortion is “sinful” and that “to benefit from an abortion — no matter how remote in time that abortion occurs — would be a sin before God.”
Jane Doe’s lawyers said she believed “all” of the state’s required vaccines “are researched, developed, tested an/or produced using cell lines artificially developed from aborted fetuses and contain products that could result in harm to a human recipient.”
California’s law allows for medical exemptions and for children on the move, such as in foster care or military families. But after a 2016 change, it no longer allows for religious or personal beliefs as a reason for an exemption.
Children already enrolled were allowed to complete their current school — so Jane Doe’s son was allowed to complete up through sixth grade. But he was supposed to get vaccinated before entering seventh grade.
Jane Doe said she was aware of that, and used “homeoprophylaxis immunizations” instead to try to prepare him. The school district accepted that for two and a half years, but in December informed her that her son would not be allowed to return to school after the New Year holiday ended.
His last day of school was Dec. 20.
Jane Doe repeatedly asked a federal district court in California to issue a restraining order against the school, but U.S. District Judge Andrew Birotte Jr., an Obama appointee, denied that.
He said Jane Doe broke procedural rules and waited too long before suddenly acting with urgency. His first ruling came at the end of the school year in June.
When Jane Doe renewed her request in August, the result was the same. The judge said there was no “genuine emergency” — or at least not one that wasn’t the result of Jane Doe’s “own making.” He said she shouldn’t have waited until the day before school began to renew the case.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals likewise refused to step in.
The Washington Times has reached out to the school district for this story.
Jane Doe’s case was filed in conjunction with We the Patriots USA Inc. They filed their request with the Supreme Court last week, but it wasn’t docketed until Friday.
Another case challenging the vaccination law was filed by four mothers in southern California. U.S. District Judge Marilyn Huff, a George H.W. Bush appointee, said the state’s interest in protecting the health of all students justified the law.
She said it was not uniquely hostile to religious beliefs and said the exemptions that were allowed served important purposes.
Private schools are covered by the law but home-schooled children are not.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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