In the months leading up to the 2021-2022 school year, hundreds of colleges and universities across the nation implemented some form of a COVID-19 vaccine requirement. These requirements often place conditions on a student’s ability to participate in on-campus activities – making it necessary to receive the vaccine or a school-approved exemption.
Unsurprisingly, the onset of these requirements has also created a plethora of legal challenges. Most notably, a lawsuit by eight students against Indiana University and its vaccine policy led to a 60-page decision from the United States District Court denying the students' request for a preliminary injunction and United States Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett dismissing the case without comment. The Northern District of Indiana opinion listed multiple reasons in its denial of the injunction, including:
- Longstanding precedent allowed the state to take reasonable means to protect the public during a health crisis.
- There is no fundamental right to a college education – especially not at a specific institution.
- A rule that affects everyone equally does not automatically infringe on the right to free exercise of religion.
Numerous cases coming in the wake of the Indiana University case point to this opinion to support the vaccine requirements. Cases involving the University of Massachusetts-Lowell and the University of Connecticut both resulted in dismissals in favor of the universities, allowing the vaccine requirements to remain in place. These cases revisit the fact that rules requiring on-campus students to be vaccinated are not a violation of a fundamental right, and speculation that a granted exemption would be revoked in the future is not enough to give students standing to sue. The University of Massachusetts-Lowell case is now on appeal.
Conversely, two cases have gone against the grain and ruled for students challenging school policy. A case in Louisiana noted that Louisiana law required religious and medical exemptions to be available to those subject to vaccine mandates, so when a medical school refused to let unvaccinated students participate in clinical work without providing for those required exemptions, the school violated Louisiana law.
The second case involves Western Michigan University and its vaccine requirement for student athletes. The students recently succeeded on their temporary restraining order (TRO), barring the school from removing student athletes from their teams who refused to get vaccinated. Judge Maloney of the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan converted the TRO to a preliminary injunction on constitutional grounds, suggesting that the school violated the free exercise clause when it refused to allow athletes to play who receive religious exemptions. Despite this initial success, legal professionals are speculating that the school will ultimately prevail, noting that there is no constitutional right to play sports and students have the option to go to a different school.
How all of these cases will ultimately end is far from certain. The United States Supreme Court has not issued any substantive rulings on vaccine mandates yet. While there is speculation that it will continue the tradition of allowing vaccine mandates, nothing is guaranteed.
Warner Associate Janelle Shankin contributed to this article.
