COVID Vaccine Mandate At Rutgers Survives Landmark Court Ruling

NEW JERSEY — When Rutgers University rolled out a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for students in the heart of the pandemic, it ignited a firestorm of controversy around a thorny question: Do students at Rutgers have the “fundamental right” to refuse a vaccine?

They do not, a federal appeals court ruled in a landmark decision this week.

On Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upheld a decision to dismiss claims brought by a group of students and Children’s Health Defense Inc. against Rutgers University. Read the full court opinion here.

During the pandemic, Rutgers added the COVID-19 vaccine to its list of required shots for students who wanted to return to in-person classes, including the campuses in Newark, New Brunswick and Camden.

Students were given exemptions if they had a documented medical contraindication to the vaccine, or if they had a “bona fide” religious belief – but they were then subject to other requirements, such as being excluded from university housing and being required to take weekly COVID-19 tests.

Rutgers didn’t initially require its professors get the COVID vaccine, only students – although the university later extended the mandate to staff, too.

When Rutgers first mandated students get the COVID vaccine, more than a dozen of them filed a federal lawsuit against the university, arguing that the school's coronavirus vaccine requirement was unconstitutional and violated their right to medical privacy. Just one month later, a federal judge denied the students' request for an injunction. A federal court in New Jersey dismissed the suit in 2022.

• See Related: COVID Vaccine Mandate Remains At Rutgers For Students, Staff

The case was eventually kicked up to a higher court, which ruled that the students’ arguments don’t hold water.

Rutgers gave its students three options, a majority of the judges on the appellate panel pointed out: get the vaccine, apply for an exemption, or pursue education elsewhere.

“That choice may have been difficult,” the appellate court wrote. “But there is no unqualified right to decide whether to ‘accept or refuse’ an Emergency Use Authorization product without consequence.”

“Nor is there an unqualified right to attend a university – let alone the university of one’s choice – without conditions,” the appellate court continued.

“As federal courts have uniformly held, there is no fundamental right to refuse vaccination,” the panel added.

The court’s written opinion – which included a dissenting argument – said that the pandemic put everyone into uncharted waters:

“Rutgers had to decide in real time, on a changing landscape of executive pronouncements and medical judgments, how to sustain its educational mission while protecting the safety of its student body. Students had to choose whether to vaccinate and resume in-person or to decline and proceed masked (for exempt students) or remotely or elsewhere (for non-exempt students). None of these options were ideal, and no doubt they created hardship for many. What we judge today, however, is not the wisdom of any party’s choice, but whether the complaint stated a claim. It did not.”

“Because Rutgers was statutorily permitted to impose the requirements it did, and the appellants have not pleaded a constitutional violation on rational basis review, the district court properly granted Rutgers’ motion to dismiss, and we will affirm,” the majority decision concluded.

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