The decision could mean that pharmaceutical companie are now vulnerable to legal actions since vaccines are granted liability protections.
The ruling centers on a lawsuit brought by Health Freedom Defense Fund (HFDF) and other plaintiffs against the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) over its mandate that all employees must be fully vaccinated against Covid by a specified deadline.
InfoWars reports: Circuit Judge R. Nelson wrote Friday that the mRNA shots, marketed as vaccines, do not effectively prevent the transmission of COVID-19 but only reduce symptoms in those who contract the virus, which do not make them traditional vaccines outlined in the 1905 Jacobson v. Massachusetts case.
Jacobson v. Massachusetts upheld the state’s right to enforce smallpox vaccinations due to their proven effectiveness in preventing disease spread, but the COVID-19 shots do not offer the same benefits.
Addressing the merits, the panel held that the district court misapplied the Supreme Court’s decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905), in concluding that the Policy survived rational basis review. Jacobson held that mandatory vaccinations were rationally related to preventing the spread of smallpox.
Here, however, plaintiffs allege that the vaccine does not effectively prevent spread but only mitigates symptoms for the recipient and therefore is akin to a medical treatment, not a ‘traditional’ vaccine. Taking plaintiffs’ allegations as true at this stage of litigation, plaintiffs plausibly alleged that the COVID-19 vaccine does not effectively ‘prevent the spread’ of COVID-19. Thus, Jacobson does not apply.
The ruling reverses a lower court’s dismissal of the case against the LAUSD’s vaccine mandate.
“Reversing the decision of the Central District of California in Los Angeles, the Ninth Circuit majority held that, first, the case was not mooted by LAUSD’s rescission of the mandate after oral argument last September, 2023,” HFDF said in a statement. “The majority called out LAUSD’s gamesmanship for what it was – a bald-faced attempt at avoiding an adverse ruling by trying to create an issue of mootness.”
HFDF president Leslie Manookian celebrated the ruling as a victory for bodily autonomy.
“The Ninth Circuit ruling today demonstrates that the court saw through LAUSD’s monkey business, and in so doing, it made clear that American’s cherished rights to self determination, including the sacred right of bodily autonomy in matters of health, are not negotiable. This is a great triumph for the truth, decency, and what is right.”
Notably, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) changed the definition of “vaccine” in 2021 to include the experimental mRNA jabs.
Vaccines used to be defined as “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease.”
But the CDC modified it to “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.”
In other words, the mRNA injection did not stimulate immunity to COVID-19, so the CDC had to change the definition of vaccine instead.
Since the court ruled the COVID-19 jabs don’t fit the traditional definition of a vaccine, it raises questions about whether pharmaceutical companies who manufactured the jabs are now vulnerable to legal action.