Miranda Guzman is a mother who has now filed a lawsuit, saying the state's vaccine mandate is in violation of a 2023 state law. According to the AP, the law, which is the “Equal Protection for Religion Act,” says the government cannot "substantially burden" someone's constitutional right to freedom of religion, unless it is "essential to further a compelling governmental interest."
This law and others in different states are modeled after the federal Religious Freedom of Restoration Act that was signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993. The purpose was to restrict federal regulations from infringing upon religious beliefs.
Guzman had previously obtained a religious exemption from the mandated vaccine for her child, who will be attending elementary school, from the state health department only for the Raleigh County school superintendent to later rescind it.
Guzman brought the case to the Raleigh County Circuit Court, suing not only state and local education boards but also the county schools' superintendent.
Daniel Schmid, an Associate VP of Legal Affairs of Liberty Counsel, spoke about how West Virginia is a mess at the current moment.
“The state law has said that you can only have medical exemptions to vaccinations in the school context, but there's also a Religious Freedom Restoration Act in West Virginia that compels the government to protect religious liberty,” Schmid explains.
He also noted how the state’s governor Patrick Morrisey (R) issued an executive order earlier this year telling schools to accept religious accommodation. However, West Virginia’s Board of Education elected to ignore the order and continue directing public schools to follow the vaccine requirements noted in the state’s law.
"I think the state Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the 1st Amendment to the U.S. constitution demands that if you permit exceptions to vaccination for one thing, which are medical reasons, you cannot thereby discriminate against religious exemptions to the same compulsory vaccination,” Schmid says.
Schmid said in summary he thinks there's a good chance Guzman will win this case.
He said COVID vaccine litigation was pretty well a mixed bag on where the courts fell, stating that some of them went the right way, some of them went the wrong way.
Now, after Covid, he thinks perhaps it's time to reconsider some of these issues where the government plainly discriminates against religious beliefs against vaccination.
He added that the First Amendment demands to be treated equally.
"We're three or four years into these regimes, and you would think people would get it by now, but we still have to keep having these fights over what seems like basic constitutional law. It's a shame,” Schmid concludes.
