NYSBA says vaccine mandates are constitutional — and smart

The New York State Bar Association released an official report supporting a vaccine mandate for their staff and encouraging broader action, which they say is legal. Photo courtesy of St. John’s Episcopal Hospital

BY Rachel Vick

The New York State Bar Association has recommended that lawyers across the state should be forced to get vaccinated, based on a new report using current data and legal context from the association’s Emergency Task Force on Mandatory Vaccination and Safeguarding The Public’s Health.

The bar association is requiring its staff to be vaccinated by Sept. 7, and are urging all its members to get vaccinated, and asking individual bar associations and law firms to do the same.

“Make no mistake about it, the pandemic is not yet over in New York or elsewhere,” said T. Andrew Brown, president of the New York State Bar Association. “To safeguard public health, we must do everything within our legal powers to make sure everyone gets vaccinated.“

“The science and the law are on our side in this effort, in which we must take action to safeguard the largest number of people possible and cannot be held hostage to the opposition of an outspoken minority,” Brown added.

The NYSBA also recommended that all students who are old enough to receive the vaccine be required to do so, which the authors of the report say are supported by long standing precedents of vaccine requirements for other diseases.

The report found that mandating vaccines is constitutional on the grounds that a governing body’s responsibility is to protect the wellbeing of citizens, and that individual states are free to allow exemptions, within reason, as they see fit.

“If the state’s regulations are “reasonable regulations established directly by legislative enactment as will protect the public health and the public safety,” the infringement on individual liberty will be held constitutional,” the report concludes.

A state court recently upheld the legislative decision of New York to repeal an exemption from vaccination on religious grounds. Private employers are required to provide accommodations for individuals exempt under the Americans with Disabilities Act, but not for those who are simply reluctant or not religiously exempt.

To change the current language of the report to reflect the since-released state stance on religious exemption would require the task force to meet and reconvene the governing body, according to an NYSBA spokesperson.

“There is no doubt that the common-sense recommendations in this report are legally permitted, and the courts time and again have upheld the government’s right to keep its citizens safe from public health threats,” said Dr. Mary Beth Morrissey, chair of the task force and a public health law attorney.

The method of encouraging voluntary vaccination and bolstering public trust varies by demographic, but the authors say that an all hands on deck approach is necessary.

“For incentives and mandates to be most effective, hearts and minds must be changed to

willingly accept vaccination,” they wrote. ”What could be accomplished if our cultural icons used the same level of expertise to influence vaccination acceptance that is used to sell car insurance or Tostitos?”