A group of Missouri parents who sued two school districts and the state of Missouri has appealed the Western Missouri District Court's dismissal of their lawsuit opposing mandatory inoculation, alleging that the state Movax Law violates their constitutional rights.
“Some children have been expelled and are waiting to have their right to an education restored,” wrote attorney Linus Baker in his appeal brief to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. “To alleviate this ongoing, irreparable harm, the Parents ask this Court to reverse the district court’s order dismissing all claims and instruct it to issue a preliminary injunction to protect the Parents and their children from Missouri’s application of Movax Law.”
The Movax Law, according to media reports, requires students to undergo vaccination in order to attend school and requires parents to consent, voluntarily or not, under penalty of law.
“They require the parent to consent but under the Missouri scheme, you can't provide voluntary consent because if you don't consent, you go to jail because if you don’t consent, then the parent is not vaccine compliant and the child doesn’t go to school,” Baker told the St. Louis Record. “If a child doesn’t go to school, they are truant and if they are truant, the parent goes to jail and the child is off to foster care. They’ve got a gun to the parent’s head.”
Baker added that the case is especially relevant given the mass COVID-19 vaccinations that are occurring nationwide.
“They're gonna say adults have to do it and if you don't get the COVID vaccine, then you don't get to make a living or you lose your job or you can't travel and you can't fly,” Baker said. “The bureaucracy’s ways of leveraging you to take that needle are going to be endless.”
CBS News reported that many frontline healthcare workers are refusing to be inoculated.
“You go first and let's see if horns grow out of your head,” Baker said. “They spent all but two or three months on this where it usually takes years and years to develop a vaccine so nobody really trusts it and I don't blame them. It's not guaranteed.”
Defendants named in Baker’s original 2019 complaint include Clever R-V School District, Miller County R III School District, Crossroads Academy, Missouri Department of Health & Senior Services Director Randall W. Williams, and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt.
“When you combine the right to parent, the right to religious freedom and the right to bodily integrity, the 8th Circuit will recognize them as hybrid rights, which when you have that kind of combination operating at one time, the state must have a compelling interest,” Baker said.
Baker also argued during a Zoom hearing before an 8th circuit panel of justices on Jan. 12, that the court should reverse the lower federal court's decision while the state argued the issue had already been litigated and resolved.
“Despite all the things the attorney general said, a compelling state interest has not been demonstrated and if the court agrees with me, then they'll have to prove a compelling state interest for every time a needle goes into the body for each vaccine and all vaccines are not created equal,” he said.