By John Jones, PhD, JD. Guest Contributor to the Tenpenny Report
The recent court opinion Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health should terrify all who espouse liberty. Though the opinion rails against legal arguments offered in Roe v Wade (1973) and Casey v Planned Parenthood (1992), if we dig a bit, we see much more.
The broader theme of the Dobbs’ opinion explains why and how police power is reserved to the States, and that each State legislature can regulate individual behavior – with near plenipotentiary power – in the name of promoting public health.
Dobbs, beyond the abortion issue
Dobbs, Alito and five other justices did not outlaw abortion. Instead, they made a declaration about any state-level statue which criminalizes abortion: such a law does not violate: (i) any individual liberty; or (ii) any individual right in the Constitution. These exact same arguments can be used to uphold criminal laws for refusal to be vaccinated, masked, or quarantined.
Judges usually favor the police-state
In American law, there is no set definition for words and phrases like liberty, rights, due process, etc. No matter how they use these words, judges, branded as liberal or conservative, nearly always favor the State.
In the 1930s, the Supreme Court supported a minimum wage law favored by Democratic president Roosevelt (West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish in 1937), However, these supposedly liberal justices also punished a man for growing his own food (Wickard v. Filburn 1947).) In 1944, these same liberal justices, ruled that American citizens could be imprisoned – indefinitely – due to their ancestry. It would be nearly 75 years later, in 2018, when four so-called conservative justices formed part of a majority that overturned the case (Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214).
Since October 2001, men and boys from all over the world – even America – have been kidnapped, sold for bounties, and tortured. Some are still imprisoned – in Guantanamo or other locations. Despite being tortured and held without charge, federal court justices, including many current members of the US Supreme Court, have ruled (or litigated) that these men can be held with secret evidence, have no right to prove their innocence, and no right to sue for being tortured.
When we consider the implications of these past court decisions for vaccine laws, the trend is disturbing. In the logic of Dobbs and other cases where individuals sought to be free from government control, clearly, a majority of the Supreme Court will support paternalism and oppose health freedom.
Who are these six justices?
Before I explain how Dobbs allows for a vaccine-police state, here is a review of the education, and legal positions of some of the justices.
- Alito (Princeton undergraduate, Yale Law School), supports strip searches of 10-year-old girls, torture and indefinite detention. Cases here: Doe v. Groody. El Masri v. US, and United States v Husayn (2022)
- Roberts (Harvard, Harvard) held that in the name of public health, the State may order you to give money to a private entity (for no services) under penalty of fine and imprisonment Case: NFIB v Sebelius, 567 U.S. 519 (2012)
- Thomas (Holy Cross, Yale) worked for Monsanto and claims that actual innocence is not a grounds to appeal a death sentence (Herrera Collins, 506 U.S. 390 (1993),Thomas concurring and Shinn v Ramirez (2022));, supports torture and indefinite detention (Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 (2004), see dissent of Thomas), claims that the state can criminalize mere association (Chicago v Morales, 527 U.S. 41 (1999), Thomas dissent), and held that school officials are de jure parents while your child is at school – or just en route to school (Morse v Frederick, 551 U.S. 393 (2007), Thomas concurrence).
- Kavanaugh (Yale, Yale) supports (i) qualified immunity for police – allowing cops to destroy your property and blow up your house; arrest, maim, torture, and kill any innocent person (Wesby v. District of Columbia) and (ii) the power of the state to imprison anyone without charge – and torture the detainee; and has denied habeas corpus (Kiyemba v. Obama, 561 F.3d 505 (D.C. Cir. 2009).
- Gorsuch (Columbia, Harvard) as a lawyer in the Department of Justice during the G. W. Bush administration: (a) defended: (i) rendition and torture (of innocent men and children); (ii), indefinite detention of the innocent; and (b) sought to eliminate the right of detainees to petition for a writ of habeas corpus. (Charlie Savage (March 16, 2017). “Neil Gorsuch Helped Defend Disputed Bush-Era Terror Policies”. The New York Times. p. A13)
- Amy Coney Barrett (Rhodes College of Tennessee, Notre Dame), supported the University of Indiana when it imposed a mandatory Covid-19 “vaccine” requirement on all students. That is, she held that a State could bar a person from (i) a public space; and (ii) contracted services (the right to attend class) on the basis of submitting to an experimental injection that causes internal bleeding, cardiac arrest, paralysis, and even death.
Legal reasoning of Dobbs
The majority offered three relevant themes in Dobbs:
(1) the word abortion is not in the constitution, therefore it is not a right that states must protect;
(2) courts must extend near-absolute deference to any legislative act that regulates health and or morals;
(3) implied rights and liberties in the Constitution are only those which are founded in American history and traditions prior to 1868 (if not prior to 1789)
They wove these ideas under the umbrella of a public policy aimed at protecting others. Compulsory vaccination is always justified on the grounds that it is necessary to save others. And if you want to consider the jurisprudence on vaccination before 1868, much less 1789, you must remember, that such legal reasoning was intertwined with the science of that era, too!
Does the Constitution establish rights?
As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist #84, the Constitution limits government, not individuals. He said that unjust rulers would declare that save the Bill of Rights, there are no other rights which government must protect. Just as the word abortion is not in the Constitution, nor are vaccination and health.
Even more, sometimes Constitutional dictates are ignored. Despite the 6th Amendment, the Supreme Court sided with States against the right to a jury trial in Baldwin v. New York, 399 U.S. 66 (1970).
Police Power to be absolute?
In regard to state-level regulations of public health, aka the “police power”, Dobbs’ holds:
“courts [may] not substitute their … beliefs for the judgment of legislative bodies.” Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U.S. 726, 729–730; and
“A law regulating abortion, like other health and welfare laws, is entitled to a “strong presumption of validity.” Heller v. Doe, 509 U.S. 312, 319. “[Said law] must be sustained [by courts] if there is a rational basis [sic] on which the legislature [thinks] it would serve legitimate state interests. [Heller], at 320.”
Judges have long ruled that mandatory vaccination laws are based on a belief that vaccination promotes public health, and there is no Constitutional ground to strike or enjoin such a law. (See cases Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 US 11 (1905); see also Zucht v. King, 260 U.S. 174 (1922).)
History, tradition, and common law
The third claim undergirding Dobbs is a logical fallacy, an appeal to tradition. Citing Timbs v. Indiana (2019) they wrote:
“[Previous Supreme] Court … decisions … held that the Due Process Clause protects rights [in] the first eight Amendments … and those rights deemed fundamental, [but] not mentioned …. … the question is whether the right is “deeply rooted in [our] history and tradition”; and … it is essential to [our] “scheme of ordered liberty.””
The Dobbs’ majority chastised the reasoning of Roe.
“Without any grounding in the constitutional text [or] history … Roe imposed [sic], on the entire country, a detailed set of rules … [failed] to note the overwhelming consensus of state laws … in 1868 … and what it said about the common law [in re abortion] was simply wrong.”
What those rights might be, the justices do not say. But Thomas explains:
“[o]ur Nation’s history [and] legal traditions … provide the … ‘guideposts for … decision-making’ … that direct and restrain … the Due Process Clause.” (Citing Moore v. East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494, 503 (1977))
Because mandatory vaccination will be enforced via criminal statutes, we should reflect on the history of American criminal law. Unsurprisingly, many laws often criminalized Blackness (see Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967); see also Dred Scott v. Sandford (1856), or minority status.
The Fugitive Slave Act (1793), though contradicting contemporary English common law, said that ‘no one could escape to freedom. The law gave effect to the Extradition Clause (Article 4, Section 2, Clause 2) and guaranteed a right for a slaveholder to recover an escaped slave. The “Act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters,” created the legal mechanism by which that could be accomplished.’ (See Somerset v Stewart (1772) 98 ER 499, where a Crown judge held that any enslaved person was manumitted per se by their mere presence on British soil. (An example of the Law of the Land).
American colonies and American states outlawed miscegenation. The famous case of Dred Scott v. Sandford (1856), paragraph 61 states:
“Massachusetts, in 1786, passed a law … like the law of 1705, [that] forbids the marriage of any white person with any negro, Indian, or mulatto …; and declares all such marriage absolutely null and void, and degrades … the issue of the marriage [with] the stain of bastardy. … [The] revised code [of] 1836 … forbids any person from joining in marriage, any white person, with any Indian, negro, or mulatto, and subjects [offenders] to imprisonment, not exceeding six months ….”
America also outlawed, immigration of non-Europeans (Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882) , and birth right citizenship for American Indians (Elk v. Wilkins, 112 U.S. 94 (1884).
Laws against drug possession started in 1875, targeting Chinese immigrants, then Mexicans and Mexican Americans, and Blacks (Department of Housing and Urban Development v. Rucker, 535 U.S. 125 (2002). Laws against vagrancy were purposely designed to re-enslave Blacks. Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District. Court of Nevada, Humboldt County, 542 U.S. 177 (2004) reversed precedent, and upheld a conviction for mere refusal to identify.
Nevertheless, Thomas defends laws that allow police to arrest us for innocent activity, through an appeal to history.
“freedom to loiter, for innocent purposes, is [not] deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition,” Chicago v Morales, 527 U.S. 41, 98 (1999).
Neither is freedom from vaccination deeply rooted in American history.
Democracy, allowing Pharma wolves to harvest the sheeple?
Further, the Dobbs’ majority offers a perverted sense of democracy, and or ignores that the American Constitution is designed to save us from democratic processes.
In 1787, the Constitution was offered with the express provision that her independent judiciary would protect minorities from a numerical majority. Speaking about the ills of democracy, in Federalist #10, James Madison wrote:
“a pure democracy, … there is nothing to check the [majority faction] to sacrifice the weaker party …. Hence it is that such democracies … have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property ….”
The Dobbs majority declared that through Roe, judges were tyrannical, because judges prevented intrusions on liberty!
“[After Roe], those on the losing side … could no longer seek to persuade their elected representatives to adopt … their views. The [Supreme] Court short-circuited the democratic process … to the large number of Americans who disagreed with Roe.”
But Roe protected a political minority. And now the Court invites majorities to take away personal security – in the name of public health.
More medical tyranny coming soon?
So what now? The Dobbs’ majority has declared overtly, that exercises of police power will receive deference, under the rubric of a rational basis.
Presently legislatures in California, Maine, New York, West Virginia, and Mississippi have mandated that children get injections for mumps, hepatitis B, pertussis, rubella, chicken pox, meningitis, influenza, measles, polio, diarrhea (Rotavirus), diphtheria, and pneumonia. There was no public demand for that. Vaccine mandates were the product of corporate bribes and PR campaigns.
There will be no opting out if States mandate shots (or jail and fine) for Covid, yellow fever, leprosy, smallpox, dengue fever, monkeypox, HPV, etc. Courts are inclined to uphold any laws calling for mandatory lockdowns and forced injections. They already did it.
In May 2020, Roberts, writing for a 5-4 majority, refused to enjoin state laws which banned church attendance. (Though six months later, other judges enjoined a similar New York law, religious freedom is stated plainly in the First Amendment). Importantly in August 2021, the same justices in Cuomo, upheld vaccine mandates for students at the University of Indiana.
Time to get active
As a political scientist and legal scholar, I offer a last piece of advice: Get active, run for office or elect state legislators and sheriffs who will not adopt or enforce mandatory vaccination laws. Prepare to or move to states that support freedom of choice.
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John Jones is a researcher who holds a Ph.D. and JD with expertise and interests in the philosophy of science, medical rhetoric, vaccine case law, and statistics. Since 2003, he has been investigating vaccines and helping people to heal and recover their vaccine-damaged children. He is the proud father of a healthy, vaccine-free daughter. This article is a synopsis of a full report entitled, What Dobbs means for mandatory vaccinations, Jones (2022), which can be downloaded here: Jones 2022.07.12 Dobbs and vaccination US.