The four person majority of the Sequim City Council has passed a resolution that implies government mandates are unconstitutional.
Elected public officials bear a responsibility to all of their constituents to work toward their betterment and not to mislead them to their detriment. COVID-19 is real and is damaging or killing people locally and worldwide. This is not new in America.
Small pox, flu, diphtheria, tetanus, measles and polio have all been national pandemics that are no longer plaguing our citizens due to vaccines invented to stop their spread.
Governmental vaccine mandates are not new.
In the 1800s, all over America, local jurisdictions passed laws or ordinances requiring vaccinations of all citizens for small pox.
Those mandates were challenged in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, a 1905 U.S. Supreme Court case.
The court’s decision declared a state may require healthy adults to get vaccinated when an existing epidemic endangers a community’s population.
To date, 943 courts have affirmed that decision.
In another U.S. Supreme Court case, Prince v. Massachusetts 1944, the court stated, in part, “Moreover, the United States Supreme Court specifically has recognized that the enactment of statutes requiring immunization against communicable diseases, in the interest of both children and of the general public, is a valid exercise of a state’s police power.”
It is not an infringement of an individual’s Constitutional rights to be required to be vaccinated against a communicable disease.
The Sequim City Council should govern, not pander to a vocal self-absorbed minority.
Bill Knebes
Port Angeles