Now in this Winter of Covid discontent, made inglorious by the silliness and selfishness of anti-vaxxers, we warm ourselves with a look back at how a court dismantled the absurd arguments challenging vaccine mandates. Sure, we have written about similar cases a lot lately – here for example. “Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more.”
It occurs to us that over the past year, courts have been islands of rationality in a sea of conspiracy theories and know-nothingism. In court one cannot simply bloviate. Assertions get tested and arguments analyzed. We’re proud to be in a profession that smacks down BS.
There was a lot of BS to smack down in Bauer v. Summey, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 203204 (D. S.C. Oct. 21, 2021). South Carolina and various political subdivisions had enacted vaccine mandates for their employees. The mandates allowed for exceptions for religious beliefs and medical conditions.
Some employees challenged those mandates under the federal and South Carolina constitutions and sought a preliminary injunction. What were the constitutional theories? Pretty much all of them. The plaintiffs invoked procedural due process (a clunky, redundant phrase made necessary by the existence of the other sort), substantive due process (an absurd concept that makes us question what we said earlier about courts being rational), equal protection (which originally meant that Southern states had to prosecute crimes perpetrated against their black citizens), and various and sundry other...
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