Rutgers Ends COVID Vaccine Mandate For Students, Teachers

NEWARK, NJ — Rutgers University has done an about-face on its COVID-19 vaccine requirement for students and staff.

As of Monday, Rutgers is no longer requiring students, faculty, staff and university affiliates to be immunized against the COVID-19 virus, its website states.

Face masks are “welcomed” at the university, but aren’t required (with the exception of some patient settings). Reporting of positive COVID-19 test results to the university is not required.

Asked to comment on the policy change, a Rutgers spokesperson gave Patch the following reply:

"Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Rutgers has followed scientific guidance from our own health experts and federal health care organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to determine requirements to best protect our community members. We committed to follow public health trends and adjust our policies as needed, as we have done today."

Sen. Declan O’Scanlon (NJ-13) said the move is the right call, but criticized the university for delaying the decision.

“I’m glad Rutgers decided to join the rest of the enlightened world by finally lifting its COVID-19 vaccine requirement,” the Republican senator said, noting that he and other critics have been calling for the school to lift its mandate since last year.

“I hope the administration at Rutgers learns something from their failures and makes significant changes going forward,” O’Scanlon added.

The about-face on Rutgers’ vaccine policy comes less than two months after a landmark court ruling from a federal appeals court, which decided that students don’t have a “fundamental right” to refuse a vaccine. Read More: COVID Vaccine Mandate At Rutgers Survives Landmark Court Ruling

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.

• See Related: COVID Isolation Guidelines Changing, Reports Say: What It Means In NJ
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