Case Trends: State Courts Continue to Grapple with Covid-19 Policies  

You’re reading our series on 2025 state constitutional trends. All cases are available in our curated State Case Database.

Five years after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, state courts are still resolving questions about the extent to which governments can exercise emergency measures without running into constitutional guardrails. In the absence of strong federal leadership, the pandemic pushed state government responses, creating questions about the scope of their legal authority to respond to the emergency. State supreme courts in Iowa, Louisiana, and North Carolina ruled this year on the constitutionality of vaccinating children without parental consent, immunity for first responders, and the suspension of court deadlines.

Parental Consent for Vaccination of Children

A minor student and his mother sued a county board of education and the operator of a clinic in North Carolina after the student was given a Covid-19 vaccine at a site operated by the clinic without consent from either the student or parent. At issue was whether the non-consensual vaccination violated the mother’s constitutional liberty and parental rights and the student’s bodily autonomy rights under the state constitution.

In March, a majority of the North Carolina Supreme Court upheld the constitutional challenge in Happel v. Board of Education, ruling that a state constitutional clause that guarantees due process and equal protection — known as the law of the land clause — protects both a parent’s right to control her child’s upbringing and the right to bodily integrity. The court also held that the immunity provision of the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, a federal law that protects pharmaceutical manufacturers from financial risk during a declared public health emergency, covers only tort injuries and did not preempt the student and his mother’s state constitutional claims.

In a dissent, Justice Allison Riggs, joined by Justice Anita Earls, 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 emergency preparadenss 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,” while applying “arbitrarily” the right of parents to direct the raising of their children on the other.

Immunity for First Responders

The Louisiana Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of the Louisiana Health Emergency Powers Act’s immunity provision, enacted to provide tort immunity to first responders during the Covid-19 pandemic and which prevented the plaintiff, a patient, from suing medical operators for claims of medical negligence.

The court held in Welch v. United Medical Healthwest-New Orleans in March that the act’s immunity provision was rationally related to the state’s interest in ensuring access to medical care during a health emergency, and thus did not violate state constitutional provisions guaranteeing access to courts, adequate remedies, and due process. The court said the provision was a public welfare legislation enacted to protect the health and safety of all Louisiana citizens during an emergency and ensured availability of healthcare by limiting healthcare workers’ liability.

The court also ruled the provision did not violate the state constitution’s prohibition on special laws, which is intended to prevent legislatures from granting favors to narrow economic elites and instead require laws to apply equally to all members of a regulated class. The provision applied to all healthcare providers — a legitimate class of persons — rather than just a special few, the court found. Finally, the court dismissed a constitutional overbreadth challenge as inapplicable outside of the First Amendment context.

Extending Deadlines for Bringing State Judicial Actions

In response to the pandemic’s onset, the Iowa Supreme Court issued a supervisory order suspending deadlines for commencing actions in district courts for 76 days between March and June of 2020. Motorists who were sued for damages in connection with an accident challenged the move, alleging it violated the separation of powers and affected their rights to procedural due process. They further argued that the court should instead apply the standard two-year statute of limitations for these types of cases and dismiss the suit against them as time barred.

In February, the court held in Rivas v. Brownell that the tolling provision did not violate the separation of powers. Addressing roadblocks faced by the legal system during an unprecedented global health emergency, the court said, fell squarely within the constitutional power of the supreme court to exercise “‘supervisory and administrative control’ over all state courts.” The court added that 22 state high courts issued emergency orders during the Covid-19 pandemic that affected the operation of statutory limitations periods. Two other state high courts — Maryland and Michigan — faced constitutional challenges to such provisions, the court pointed out, and both upheld them.

• • •

Five years on, the Covid-19 pandemic continues to ripple through state courts, sparking ongoing constitutional battles over privacy, power, and the limits of government, among other questions. Just last month, the North Carolina Supreme Court allowed bar owners to pursue constitutional challenges against the governor for pandemic lockdown-related losses based on a state constitutional provision guaranteeing a right to earn a living. State courts are far from finished untangling the legal legacy of Covid-19.

Chihiro Isozaki is a counsel in the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

Suggested Citation: Chihiro Isozaki, Case Trends: State Courts Continue to Grapple with Covid-19 Policies, Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (Sep. 10, 2025), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/case-trends-state-courts-continue-grapple-covid-19-policies-0