A Maine family’s then-five-year-old son was vaccinated in November 2021 with the Pfizer-

BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at a public school without his parents’ consent.  After the family filed suit, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled that their state claims for damages were pre-empted by the federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, holding that their parental rights to consent and their child’s right to bodily integrity were not violated.  By Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the United States Supreme Court dated June 2, 2025, the Hogan family has requested that the U.S. Supreme Court review their case.

Most Americans trust their public schools not to inject their children with vaccines without consent, and they expect that if a school did offend this commonsense expectation, it would be legally liable.  Yet Maine is not alone in ruling that parents lose traditional legal protections when experimental COVID-19 vaccines are thrust into their children’s arms without consent.  Vermont’s Supreme Court ruled identically.

Maine’s highest court specifically ruled that the plaintiffs’ constitutional liberties had not been violated.  In their Petition, the Hogans’ legal counsel disagreed, listing numerous violations of all Americans’ most fundamental liberties that are undermined if the PREP Act is applied to foreclose their common law state rights.

As the petition explains:

If the PREP Act purports to authorize “covered persons” to administer vaccines in violation of state law, even to those who object thereto, then the PREP Act abridges both the constitutional right to bodily integrity and the fundamental liberty interest of the parents in the welfare and health of their child.

This process of leaving injured parties without a real remedy or access to the courts in their own state, and without the right to a jury trial there, is violative of both substantive and procedural due process.

The PREP Act creates a machinery for the abridgement of these constitutional rights. The

Maine Supreme Judicial Court, and other state supreme courts, with the exception of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, have ignored these federally protected rights in deciding the PREP Act preempts state law protecting the rights of persons against common law battery and tortious interference with parental rights.

A creative jurisprudential argument in the Hogan petition invokes an evolving principle called the “anti-commandeering doctrine,”  which “recognizes that Congressional efforts to ‘commandeer the legislative processes of the States by directly compelling them to enact and enforce a federal regulatory program’ is unconstitutional.”  The Hogan petition explains that the U.S. Congress has overstepped its bounds by granting product liability immunity to vaccine manufacturers in derogation of the authority of states to oversee public safety:

In the United States, the state governments rather than the federal government possess the “police power,” and included within this power of the States is the power to regulate, administer and enforce public health laws.

There are many threats to liberty and due process within the PREP Act. There are constitutional missteps with the apparent attempt by Congress to impose laws regarding health (especially vaccines) not otherwise connected to its interstate commerce power. There are very real problems with preempting state lawsuits filed in state courts for violations of “bodily integrity,” and directing state judges to dismiss those lawsuits pending in their courts that somehow relate to injuries suffered after some federal official declares that an emergency exists.

Americans must pray that the U.S. Supreme Court scrutinizes this scheme of corporate protection at the expense of longstanding parental and patients’ rights with a critical eye.  More and more evidence has emerged under the Trump administration (and Robert F. Kennedy’s tenure as Health and Human Services secretary) that COVID vaccines were not “safe and effective” as advertised.  Federal agencies were deeply involved in disseminating misinformation and disinformation to amplify anxiety and pressure Americans to subject themselves and their children to under-tested, overhyped experimental vaccines.

Trust in federal agencies such as the NIH, CDC, and FDA will not be restored without accountability.  If the U.S. Supreme Court declines to address the egregious miscarriages of justice accomplished under the PREP Act, all American children are at continuous risk, and public schools will attract suspicion.  Similarly, public confidence in the nation’s highest court will be tarnished along with the federal agencies and Congress it is entrusted to hold to the highest law of the land.

Author, pastor, and attorney John Klar raises grass-fed beef and sheep in Vermont.  His Substack, Small Farm Republic, is based on his 2023 book Small Farm Republic: Why Conservatives Must Embrace Local Agriculture, Reject Climate Alarmism, and Lead an Environmental Revival. John is a staff writer at Liberty Nation News.

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