A recent court ruling may increase accountability of school and state employees who overruled parents’ rights to make health care decisions for their children during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In August 2021, Tanner Smith was sent to his high school’s clinic in Guilford County, North Carolina, for COVID-19 testing. Clinic employees allegedly forced Smith to get a COVID injection even though his mother had not signed the required consent form and Smith had not agreed to the injection.
In March 2023, Smith’s mother, Emily Happel, filed a lawsuit against the Guilford County Board of Education and the school clinic’s operating partner, Old North State Medical Society (ONSMS), for battery and violations of state constitutional rights.
Rejected, Then Accepted
The Superior Court of Guilford County and the Court of Appeals dismissed Happel’s right to sue and rejected all claims, ruling the defendants were immune from any legal claims under the federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act. Happel was seeking declarative and injunctive relief, reimbursement for attorney fees and costs, and whatever the court deemed proper.
Chief Justice Paul Newby of the North Carolina Supreme Court overturned the lower courts’ decisions in March.
Newby wrote that the PREP Act appears to provide immunity only for torts, or civil injuries, not constitutional violations.
“It is similarly unconvincing to insist that the PREP Act merely displaces the remedy for a constitutional violation, as opposed to destroying the underlying right,” wrote Newby.
Newby dismissed Happel’s battery claim and remanded the case for further proceedings on the grounds of constitutional rights violations.
Parents’ Rights Upheld
Newby’s ruling was right, says Andy Schlafly, general counsel for the Association of American Physicians.
“Parents have traditionally been the sole decision makers concerning pediatric medical care for their children,” said Schlafly. “Only courts have the right to override parents’ decisions to allow or decline medical care for their children younger than 18 years old.”
Emergency exceptions must be very narrow to fall within legal limits, such as performing CPR or some other urgently necessary action to save someone’s life, says Schlafly.
“Having a COVID shot is not an emergency,” said Schlafly.
Even during emergency situations, the burden should be very high for the state to override fundamental freedoms, confining such action to the least restrictive means possible, says Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation’s Founding Freedoms Law Center.
“We always believe that unless a parent has forfeited their parental rights by truly abusing their child in the eyes of the law, they must retain the right to do as they see best fit for their child,” said Cobb. “They know best. It is never ideal for the state to make decisions about what constitutes an emergency and step in over the parent.”
Forced Vaccines Upheld
Some state courts continue to rule in favor of COVID-19-era controls.
In March 2025, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled the PREP Act granted immunity to vaccine administrators in a case similar to Happel’s.
A family is petitioning a court to review a 2024 lower court ruling in their lawsuit in Vermont claiming a school district staff member administered COVID-19 shots to their child in 2021 without parental consent. In February, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a fast-track petition to review the matter.
Fears Exploited
In 2021, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California announced a COVID-19 vaccine requirement for all middle and high school children, pending Food and Drug Administration approval of COVID shots for minors.
“California probably led the country in COVID craziness,” said Larry Sand, president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network.
Sand says the state and federal government pushed their way into people’s lives.
“If you didn’t get the vaccines, you were selfish,” said Sand. “Masks were omnipresent. Clearly, science took a back seat to fearmongering and groupthink.”
One doctor observed there was a broad stroke of action in the name of protection.
“Schools have been lumped in with high-risk settings including health care sites, homeless shelters and prisons, despite young people having a very low risk of serious illness,” said Jeanne Ann Noble, M.D., an emergency room physician at the University of California, in FrontPageMag in March 2022.
COVID-19 policies were the result of “fear-based policy and teachers’ union politics,” Noble told the magazine.
Floodgates Opened
Vaccines are not the only area where institutions have taken control away from parents with government permission. Hospitals have been allowing patients as young as 12 to receive treatment on their own, with no parent present and no written authority from them.
This trending “minor in charge” approach has come under scrutiny in recent months with revelations of radical gender treatments that schools and health care groups have encouraged children to undergo while conspiring to hide that knowledge from parents.
Rights Protected
Happel’s case adds to the legal scrutiny over institutional control of minors and could set a precedent for other lawsuits and a return to government protection of parents’ rights to manage their children’s health care, says Schlafly.
“The mother and son have an excellent chance of winning now that the North Carolina Supreme Court has ruled in their favor,” said Schlafly. “The legal situation on this is improving, and this ruling helps restore the full rights of parents. Trump and RFK Jr. are on the side of parents, so parents’ rights will be respected under the current administration.”
Ashley Bateman (bateman.ae@googlemail.com) writes from Virginia.
