You do not have the ‘constitutional right’ to refuse the Covid-19 vaccine – CNN

One frequently heard pushback against vaccine mandates is that there is a "constitutional right" to choose whether to be vaccinated or not for adults and a right to determine whether children can be vaccinated. That is a non-starter in the midst of a pandemic.

The Constitution is not a suicide pact guaranteeing a right to harm others. The government has latitude to protect citizens from deadly conditions, especially when the science supporting vaccination is so clear.

We agree, but also believe that the public needs to better understand that there is no constitutional right to avoid vaccine mandates against a deadly disease.

Those challenging the government mandates are likely to invoke their rights under the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments, which protect speech, religion, and a right not to "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Their view ends up as a snapshot of themselves; nonetheless, rights can be limited if a person is endangering another.

The government may prohibit otherwise constitutionally protected conduct to save the lives of others.

For example, it is well-settled that governments can ban yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater, because such speech can lead to death as attendees race to the exits. True, the First Amendment's Speech Clause protects the "freedom of speech," but there is no requirement that the government can't prevent scenarios likely leading to death.

The same reasoning applies to vaccine mandates. The Supreme Court explicitly upheld vaccine mandates against deadly diseases in Jacobson, where it explained: "the rights of the individual in respect of his liberty may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand." We live in a country of ordered liberty, not individual autonomy that paves the way to the deaths of others. In short, it is not the right of every American citizen to catch and transmit a potentially fatal infection.

The depth of the science and the worldwide experience show plainly that vaccination is the best protection from this pandemic, and that the faster we reach herd immunity the more likely it will be that people won't die from this virus, hospitals won't be overburdened, and the economy will fully recover.

Children and adults have a constitutional right to "life" that can only be protected if there is mass vaccination. It's time for state and local governments to issue vaccine mandates and fines -- as New York and San Francisco have -- before this virus mutates into an even more elusive killer than it already is.

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You do not have the 'constitutional right' to refuse the Covid-19 vaccine - CNN