Draft:Workman v. Mingo City Board of Education

Workman v. Mingo City Board of Education, 419 Fed. Appx. 348 (4th Cir. 2011), was a decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit holding that the state of West Virginia was not constitutionally required to provide a religious exemption to vaccination.

The decision was authored by judge James Andrew Wynn, on a panel with G. Steven Agee and senior district judge Patrick Michael Duffy.

"In Workman v. Mingo County (a case challenging West Virginia's law granting only medical exemptions), the plaintiff argued that Smith "preserved an exception for education-related laws that burden religion". Noting a circuit split over the validity of the hybrid rights theory, the Fourth Circuit declined to decide the issue “because, even assuming for the sake of argument that strict scrutiny applies, prior decisions from the Supreme Court guide us to conclude that West Virginia’s vaccination laws withstand such scrutiny"."

The Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear an appeal of the ruling.

California later followed this example:

"The SB 277 courts ruled that a religious exemption was not required under our federal jurisprudence. In that, they followed the latest federal courts to examine vaccine mandates—Workman v. Mingo County Bd. of Ed. and Phillips v. City of New York."

The Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear the case.

"Jennifer Workman said her faith as a member of the Bapticostal Church prohibited her from subjecting her younger daughter, born in 2002, to any medical harm".

Workman "obtained a certificate from a child psychiatrist, exempting her from the vaccines".

Exemption was denied; Workman "was forced to home-school her daughter, according to her lawsuit, filed in April 2009 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia".

Suit claimed that "denial of 'religious accommodation' violated her rights to free exercise of religion and equal protection under the First and 14th amendments".

"The district court dismissed the case in November 2009", Fourth Circuit affirmed dismissal in March 2011.

"suit filed by Jennifer Workman, who feared exposing her 6-year-old daughter to mandatory vaccines required for school because the child's older sister developed developmental disorders that the mother attributes to vaccines".

"Mingo County School District, in West Virginia, turned down the request on the advice of the state health department".

Workman claimed that her "Christian Bapticostal religious beliefs require that she honor God by protecting her child from harm and illness, and that immunizing [the 6-year-old] in this instance would violate those sincerely held beliefs".

In 2009, the district court "granted summary judgment to the school district on 11th Amendment immunity grounds".

The Fourth Circuit panel unanimously upheld the West Virginia vaccination mandate as not unconstitutionally infringing Workman's First Amendment rights to free exercise of religion.

The decision stated that "It has been settled law for many years that claims of religious freedom must give way in the face of the compelling interest of society in fighting the spread of contagious diseases through mandatory inoculation programs".

In Phillips v. City of New York: "Turning to plaintiff's free exercise of religion argument, the Second Circuit did not see Jacobson as controlling. However, relying on reasoning from Jacobson (1905), Prince v. Massachusetts (1944), and other case law on point, especially Workman v. Mingo County Board of Education (4th Cir. 2011) (unpublished), the Second Circuit held, that mandatory vaccination as a condition for admission to school does not violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment".