CHARLESTON, WV (WOAY) – The West Virginia State Board of Education has filed a notice of appeal in Raleigh County Circuit Court, indicating that it plans to take a preliminary injunction granted to several Raleigh County families to the highest court in the state.
The filing, which was first reported by West Virginia MetroNews and confirmed by Newswatch through circuit court records, lawyers for the State Board of Education argued that several legal errors were made in Circuit Judge Michael Froble’s decision to grant a preliminary injunction.
The case has been brought by several Raleigh County families, who argued that the state board of education’s policy of refusing religious exemptions to mandatory vaccines violated their right to religious freedom.
In his order granting a preliminary injunction, Froble agreed, saying that the state’s “compulsory vaccination law is not valid without a religious exemption.”
The injunction is narrow in scope and only applies to the families who brought the case. The state board of education has maintained that it is simply following state law, arguing it only allows medical exemptions to vaccines.
In the notice of appeal, lawyers for the board said that freedom of religion is not boundless.
“The right to free exercise of religion is a vital right, but it is not a boundless right. The Supreme Court of the United States has long recognized that the right to free exercise of religion does not give a person ‘freedom from compulsory vaccination’ because the ‘right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or the child to communicable disease or the latter to ill health or death,'” the filing reads.
Governor Patrick Morrisey is backing the lawsuit and issued an executive order directing state government to begin honoring religious exemptions.
You can view the entire notice here:
rc notice of appeal vaccine
