Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905) Vaccine Mandate
By David L. Hudson, Jr.
Related cases in Rights of Religious Adherents
In Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905), the Supreme Court upheld a state’s mandatory compulsory smallpox vaccination law over the challenge of a pastor who alleged that it violated his religious liberty rights.
Pastor Henning Jacobson contended that he had a right under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to avoid the mandatory vaccination law.
Court: Requiring smallpox vaccine does not violate First Amendment
The U.S. Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice John Marshall Harlan I, ruled that the state of Massachusetts acted constitutionally within its police powers to pass a law to protect the health and safety of the public.
“According to settled principles, the police power of a State must be held to embrace, at least, such reasonable regulations established directly by legislative enactment as will protect the public health and the public safety,” Harlan wrote.
Individual right must sometimes give way to 'common good', Harlan wrote
MOAR: https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1824/jacobson-v-massachusetts