The Northern Kentucky Health Department was within its rights to order students with chickenpox to stay away from their private Northern Kentucky high school, the Kentucky Court of Appeals ruled Friday.
The students at Assumption Academy and Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, two Catholic high schools in Walton, sued after the health department instituted a series of measures to try and prevent the spread of the virus among the student body last winter.
Because chickenpox vaccines are grown from laboratory cells reproduced from cells that belonged to a fetus aborted in the 1960s, 86 percent of the students at the schools have asked for a religious exemption from vaccine requirements. The Vatican has said it allows Catholics to get the vaccine, but the students belong to a conservative branch of the church that argues that requiring students to get it violates their religious rights.
Attorneys for student Jerome Kunkel and about two dozen others filed a lawsuit in February after the health department told students to stay home from school until an outbreak of chickenpox subsided. Kunkel and other students filed suit and asked Boone County Circuit Court Judge James R. Schrand to issue an injunction blocking the health department’s order. But in April, Schrand refused, triggering an appeal from Kunkel.
In May, Kunkel himself came down with chickenpox.
The appeals court Friday upheld Schrand’s decision.
The Northern Kentucky Health Department called the appeals court’s ruling “a resounding victory for public health in Kentucky” in a statement.
This article appears in Jun 26 – Jul 3, 2019.
