(LifeSiteNews) — An Ohio-based attorney told LifeSiteNews on Monday that vaccine mandates, whether put in place by private companies or the federal government, are not on sound legal footing.
Thomas Renz, who is representing healthcare workers in Michigan in a legal challenge to jab requirements, said there’s “no question that the fundamental right to bodily integrity exists, and supersedes the state’s interest, even in preserving life.”
Renz’ clients include a group of Henry Ford Health System employees in Michigan who objected to the healthcare organization’s jab requirement. Renz withdrew the lawsuit on Friday in response to pending jab requirements from President Joe Biden’s administration. His clients remain in legal limbo, he said, though he expects they will win their lawsuit.
“We’re not done with this, we just have to change it,” Renz said. “Ethics are super, super important to me … and it’s not appropriate to waste the court’s time with it.”
The clients he represents, including nurses and other healthcare staff, “have a fundamental right to bodily integrity as recognized under the law, but that’s being egregiously ignored around the country.”
He criticized the hypocrisy of abortion activists who think bodily autonomy extends to the distinct human life in the womb, but not to a person’s right to reject the jab.
“On one side we have people saying we should be able to murder a fetus, but on the other side of their mouth they’re saying you have to be experimented on for a disease with a 99% recovery rate,” Renz said. “My strong recommendation for everyone is to just not do it — people need to band together and say ‘no.’ If you won’t stand for health freedom … what will you stand for? People need to resist this. They need to say, ‘Absolutely not.’”
Renz also represents a computer programmer who said the federal government is underreporting deaths related to the COVID-19 vaccine, a claim the Department of Health and Human Services denies.
Renz plans to challenge Biden’s inoculation fiats
He said he is working on litigation to oppose President Biden’s proposed plan to have the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issue a rule requiring companies with 100 or more employees to mandate the COVID inoculation.
“We’re working on litigation now, there will be lots of it. Biden said, ‘Bring it.’ Well, I’m going to bring it. He is outright ignoring the language of the law,” Renz said.
He said that mandate supporters are citing a 1905 Supreme Court case, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, which has been overturned, ironically, by Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Jacobson levied a fine on a Massachusetts man who refused a smallpox vaccine, despite a county health board’s mandate.
Renz said preborn babies need to be protected from abortion, and all Americans need to be protected from experimental injections.
“Biden just had a fit about the Texas abortion law, but is okay with experimenting on people, he’s okay with killing babies, but he’s not okay with allowing people to decide [not] to risk their life with a vaccine,” Renz said.
Law professor criticizes abuse of forced vaccine Supreme Court decision
The Ohio attorney’s analysis is similar to that of a Texas professor of law.
Josh Blackman of the South Texas College of Law called the Jacobson decision an “irrepressible myth.”
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, courts reflexively relied on the mythicized account of Jacobson to rubberstamp unprecedented restrictions on individual freedom,” Blackman said in an August 17 law review article. He argued the case had been abused to say the “federal government could forcibly sterilize people to promote the common good” and to hold that “during public health crises, courts must provide across-the-board deference to the government.”
“Future disputes should be resolved based on settled law, and not on an irrepressible myth,” Blackman said.