Many of us have been comforted on the question of mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations by President Trump's assurances that vaccines will not be mandatory – but there is at least one way Trump can be trumped, and that is by a ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court. I believe SCOTUS has just telegraphed its intent to mandate COVID-19 vaccines in a future ruling.
On Friday, July 24, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley v. Steve Sisolak, Governor of Nevada, et al. It was a 5-4 decision in which the snake John Roberts swung the court to the left yet again, upholding an egregious double standard in COVID-19 restrictions on churches as compared specifically to casinos in response to an emergency appeal for an injunction against the governor's dictate by Calvary Chapel. As conservative Justice Samuel Alito noted in his dissent, there were numerous other categories of secular businesses that received favored status under Sisolak's order.
Most analysts have naturally focused on the religious discrimination implicit in the ruling, especially since the Constitution expressly forbids government from passing any law "prohibiting the free exercise" of religion.
That phrase from the First Amendment is one of the most straightforward legal mandates not just of the Bill of Rights, but of all human jurisprudence of the past thousand years, echoing the exact same legislative intent of the first principle of the Magna Carta (1215), "the English church shall be free." And what is balanced against that massive legal foundation stone in John Robert's corrupt scales of justice? A feather-light, arbitrary public health order that exempts gambling casinos and mobs of anarchists. Nothing more need be said on this theme except perhaps a gentle chiding of "the church" for abandoning the mission field of politics to casino magnates and hard-left pressure groups. You are reaping the natural consequence of neglecting your duty of civil stewardship.
However, as a long-time Christian constitutional law attorney and social activist, I'm a bit more cynical than most analysts when it comes to the nation's ultimate elite body. Indeed, I have come to consider the judiciary – especially the "Supremes" – as the most political of our three branches of government, at least since Marxist-leaning FDR's court-flipping power play that historians call the "switch in time that saved nine." In that incident, another SCOTUS swing voter, named Owen Roberts (no relation), switched from a consistent conservative to a liberal voter on Roosevelt's New Deal legislation (the Commie Red New Deal, not the Fascist Green one) – essentially succumbing to blackmail to prevent Roosevelt from packing the court with nine additional justices (expanding it to 18 seats).
What struck me hardest from the Calvary Chapel ruling – in fact sending a chill down my spine – was the majority's emphasis on Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U. S. 11 (1905) as justification for upholding Sisolak's public health order. Jacobson is a case upholding mandatory vaccinations! To quote Alito directly: "Jacobson primarily involved a substantive due process challenge to a local ordinance requiring residents to be vaccinated for small pox."
What the Calvary Chapel ruling looks like to me is an advanced warning that the same liberal majority is preparing the public for mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations, knowing that the controversial nature of their anti-Christian double standard ensures that their endorsement of Jacobson will get lots of attention especially among the people most likely to oppose the vaccine.
Am I absolutely convinced that SCOTUS will rule that local and/or state governments can mandate the COVID-19 vaccine for citizens in their jurisdiction? No. Do I believe it is more likely based on the Calvary Chapel case? Sadly, yes. And considering that even the conservative states have caved to public health officials on mask and lockdown mandates, the only hope I can see for avoiding mandatory vaccines is a Trump reelection accompanied either by 1) full GOP control of Congress, or 2) a quick flip of SCOTUS to a conservative majority.
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