THE ESSENCE OF REPUBLICAN LIBERTY:

The Spirit of 1776 was as much about science as it was about freedom. George Washington required the entire Continental Army to get inoculated against smallpox--the first army-wide vaccination in history. Mortality dropped from 30% to 1%. Mandatory vaccinations just might have won America its freedom. From that auspicious beginning, Americans have let vaccine science protect our soldiers in the military, our students in school, our healthcare workers on the front lines--everyone.

Vaccine mandates are undoubtedly constitutional. The Supreme Court explained back in 1905 that freedom can be limited, especially when wielded to harm others' rights: "The liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States does not import an absolute right in each person to be at all times, and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint..." 

During WWII, the court specifically said that religious freedom is no excuse to shun vaccines: "The right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or the child to communicable disease or the latter to ill health or death." Even the late, uber-conservative Justice Antonin Scalia singled out religious exemption from "compulsory vaccination laws" as not required by the First Amendment. Most state courts have independently reached the same conclusion.

In hundreds of cases across more than a century, the law is clear: vaccine mandates are constitutional and religious exemptions are not constitutionally required.

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