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\nJanuary 29, 2021 (Children’s Health Defense<\/a>) \u2014 Children\u2019s Health Defense (CHD)\u00a0has petitioned<\/a>\u00a0the U.S. Supreme Court to get New York kids back to school.<\/p>\n
CHD and seven New York families with medically vulnerable children took the New York State Department of Health to court in June 2020. The families\u00a0filed a proposed class action lawsuit<\/a> in the Northern District of New York that challenged restrictive new regulations on the medical exemption to the state\u2019s vaccine requirements.<\/p>\n In New York, all children are required to receive, on average, 50 doses of vaccines on a schedule following\u00a0guidelines<\/a>\u00a0set forth by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). To attend any private or public school, children must be fully up to date at the start of the school year\u00a0unless they have a medical exemption<\/a>. Pursuant to\u00a0statute<\/a>, if any physician licensed by the state certifies that the child is at risk of harm from the vaccine, the child is supposed to be exempt.<\/p>\n In August 2019, however, unelected officials at the state\u2019s health department dramatically undercut the statutory medical exemption protections without any direction from the legislature to do so. The state\u00a0issued a new regulation<\/a>\u00a0that takes clinical judgment away from treating physicians and predefines \u201cwhat may cause harm\u201d as a narrow list of conditions and contraindications contained in the CDC\u2019s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices \u201cBest Practices Guidelines.\u201d<\/p>\n The CDC itself cautioned in an email to one of the plaintiffs that the guidelines cannot be safely used for this purpose \u2014 they are not population-based, do not include all the reasons an individual child may need to be exempt, and cannot be substituted for clinical judgment based on the best available up-to-date evidence and a child\u2019s individual medical history.<\/p>\n Under the new definition, hundreds of known vaccine reactions do not qualify for exemption. Even established, serious adverse reactions in vaccine package inserts and conditions routinely compensated as presumptive injuries in \u201cvaccine court<\/a>\u201d are excluded.<\/p>\n Some of the plaintiff families have already lost a child to death from vaccine injuries. One family lost two children. They were compensated by the\u00a0National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program<\/a>\u00a0for a vaccine caused death after contested proceedings. But according to Dr. Elizabeth Rausch-Phung, director of immunizations at the Department of Health, the death of a family member is not a valid reason for exemption, even if surviving children share the same risk factors.<\/p>\n In addition to dangerously narrowing the definition of \u201cwhat may cause harm,\u201d the Department of Health has deputized school principals to decide if the treating doctor\u2019s medical exemption is correct.<\/p>\n All seven families submitted medical exemptions from one, or often multiple, licensed physicians certifying that their children are at risk of serious harm or death from a vaccine. Each child was expelled from school after school principals, with no medical training, overruled doctors\u2019 evidence-based determinations.<\/p>\n After families filed suit in June 2020, rather than work with the families, the Department of Health issued guidelines directing schools to exclude the children even from remote learning. Although the families filed for temporary relief pending resolution of the lawsuit, the District Court and Second Circuit denied even that access.<\/p>\n