A short excerpt from Friday's 22,000-word North Carolina Supreme Court opinion in Happel v. Guilford County Bd. of Ed. (written by Chief Justice Paul Newby):
This case concerns a fourteen-year-old boy's attempt to seek a legal remedy after his school's chosen medical provider injected him with a COVID-19 vaccine against his and his mother's wishes…. Defendants … argue that the federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act [enacted in 2005] completely immunizes them from plaintiffs' suit because it preempts all of their state law claims. Thus, we are tasked with considering whether Congress intended the PREP Act to immunize state actors who forcibly vaccinate a child without his or his parent's consent, thereby committing a battery and infringing their fundamental rights under the state constitution.
The PREP Act's plain text leads us to conclude that its immunity only covers tort injuries. Because tort injuries are not constitutional violations, the PREP Act does not bar plaintiffs' constitutional claims. We therefore affirm the decision below as to plaintiffs' battery claim, reverse as to their constitutional claims, and remand for further proceedings….
In August 2021, Western Guilford High School notified its football players and their parents, including fourteen-year-old Tanner Smith and his mother, Emily Happel, that it had identified a cluster of COVID-19 cases among the team. It therefore suspended all team activities and required players to undergo COVID-19 testing or be "cleared by a public health professional" before returning to practice. The school provided a list of three locations at which players could receive free testing, one of which was a dual testing and vaccination clinic hosted at the school itself and operated in partnership with defendant Old North State Medical Society (ONSMS). The letter sent to players and their parents, however, only stated that the school clinic offered COVID-19 tests. It did not explain that the school clinic also provided COVID-19 vaccines, nor did it state that the school clinic required students to bring a signed parental consent form before they could be vaccinated.
A few days later, Smith's stepfather drove him to the school clinic to be tested. Smith did not want to be vaccinated. He did not bring a signed consent form and was unaware that the school clinic even offered vaccines until arriving that day. Clinic workers nonetheless attempted to contact the child's mother over the phone to obtain consent to vaccinate her son. Happel did not answer, at which point one of the workers instructed another to "give it to [Smith] anyway." The workers made no effort to contact Smith's stepfather, who was waiting outside in the parking lot. Ignoring additional protests from Smith himself, the workers forcibly injected him with the first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine….
The court took the view that the plaintiffs' allegations adequately raised state constitutional claims (plaintiffs had abandoned their federal claims) under the state constitutional rights to bodily integrity and to parental authority:
