Happel v. Board of Education

Minor student and student’s mother brought an action against the county board of education and the operator of a clinic after the student was given a COVID-19 vaccine without consent from either student or parent at a testing and vaccination site operated by the clinic, asserting claims for battery and for violations of mother’s constitutional liberty and parental rights and of student’s bodily autonomy rights under State Constitution. Held that the law of the land clause of the North Carolina Constitution protects both a parent’s right to control her child’s upbringing and the right to bodily integrity. Also held that the immunity provision of the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act only covers tort injuries and did not preempt claimants’ state constitutional claims.

In a dissent, Justice Allison Riggs criticized the majority for “explicitly rewrit[ing] an unambiguous statute to exclude state constitutional claims from the broad and inclusive immunity ‘from suit and liability under Federal and State law with respect to all claims for loss’ established by the [] PREP Act.” Further, Riggs accused the majority on the one hand of “arbitrarily defin[ing] without any apparent principle” the state constitutional right to bodily integrity “divorced from bodily autonomy,” and “appl[ying] arbitrarily” the right of parents to direct the raising of their children.