- The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled parents can sue over non-consensual child vaccinations, rejecting federal immunity under the PREP Act.
- The case involved a teen given a COVID-19 vaccine at school despite objections from him and his mother.
- The court emphasized constitutional rights, including parental authority, cannot be overridden by emergency laws.
- The ruling narrows PREP Act immunity, limiting it to tort claims, not constitutional violations.
- The decision sets a precedent against government overreach in medical decisions, reinforcing parental rights.
In a decisive rebuke of government overreach, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled this week that parents can sue when officials or medical providers vaccinate their children without consent—even under federal immunity laws like the PREP Act. The 4-3 decision, handed down on March 21, marks a major win for constitutional protections, affirming that bureaucrats cannot trample parental rights under the guise of emergency powers.
The case centers on Emily Happel and her then-14-year-old son, Tanner Smith, who was given a COVID-19 vaccine in 2021 against both his and his mother’s explicit objections at a school-run clinic in Guilford County. Lower courts had dismissed the family’s lawsuit, citing immunity under the federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act). But the state’s highest court rejected that argument, declaring that constitutional rights—including a parent’s authority over their child’s medical care—cannot be erased by bureaucratic loopholes.
“The fundamental and paramount constitutional rights to bodily integrity and parental control would be discarded without second thought,” wrote Chief Justice Paul Newby in the majority opinion. “That simply cannot be what Congress intended.”
A case of government overreach
The ruling exposes the troubling reality of how far some officials went during the pandemic. Tanner Smith, then a high school freshman, visited a testing clinic after COVID-19 cases spread through his football team. Unbeknownst to him or his mother, the site was also administering vaccines. When staff failed to reach Happel for consent, a worker allegedly instructed a colleague to “give it to him anyway,” according to court filings.
Happel and Tanner sued the Guilford County Board of Education and the Old North State Medical Society, which operated the clinic, for battery and violations of their state constitutional rights. While the battery claims were dismissed, the Supreme Court’s ruling revives the constitutional argument—a critical distinction that limits the PREP Act’s scope.
“The PREP Act has a purpose, and that purpose is to provide immunity protections in situations when it might be difficult to determine the safety of a countermeasure during a time of crisis,” said Steven Walker, the family’s attorney. “It was never intended to allow the government to trample on the clear constitutional rights of its citizens.”
Why this ruling matters
The decision dismantles the broad immunity shield that lower courts had granted under the PREP Act, which was invoked during COVID-19 to protect vaccine providers from most lawsuits. Justice Newby emphasized that the law’s immunity applies only to tort claims (like injury or property loss), not constitutional violations.
Dissenting justices, led by Justice Allison Riggs, argued the majority’s interpretation was “fundamentally unsound,” insisting the PREP Act’s protections should extend to constitutional claims. But the court’s conservative majority held firm, with Justice Philip Berger Jr. warning that unchecked immunity could enable “outright wrongful acts.”
The case now returns to the appeals court to weigh the constitutional claims—a process that could set a precedent for future challenges to government-mandated medical interventions.
A win for families
This ruling is more than a legal victory for one family; it’s a resounding affirmation that parental rights cannot be sidelined by emergency decrees. For years, conservatives have warned against government intrusion into family decisions—from school curricula to medical choices. The Happel case proves those concerns were justified.
As Justice Newby noted, allowing unchecked authority under laws like the PREP Act would create a dangerous precedent: Imagine a nurse forcibly vaccinating an unconscious patient or a school official lying about a treatment’s risks. Without constitutional guardrails, he wrote, such abuses could go unchecked.
For Emily Happel and her son, the fight isn’t over. But the North Carolina Supreme Court has affirmed that parents, not the state, have the final say in their children’s care. And no federal law can erase that fundamental freedom.
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