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July 30, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – In a remarkable victory for individual freedoms with regard to the COVID-19 experimental “vaccine,” the Constitutional Tribunal of Spain has refused to lift the suspension of a regional law which provided for the possibility of making vaccines mandatory in health crises. The Tribunal based its reasoning on the fact that the vaccine mandate “would be likely to cause certain and effective damages that may be irreparable or difficult to repair, insofar as vaccination may be imposed against the will of the citizen.”
The Tribunal’s decision, signed on July 20 and made public on July 23 on its website, suspended a general disposition of the Xunta de Galicia (northwestern Spain) that aimed to give the autonomous region power to set up local sanitary restrictions, compulsory isolation and prophylactic measures. These include mandatory “vaccination or immunization” with regard to any infectious and transmissible disease – not only COVID-19.
The bill dates back to February 25, 2021, modifying previous regional legislation on “Galician health.” It was immediately suspended at the behest of Spain’s national authorities (such a suspension of a regional law is limited to five months) and in April, the Spanish Attorney General filed a case before the Constitutional Tribunal asking for the prolonged suspension on the grounds of unconstitutionality. The Autonomous Community, for its part, was asking for the early lifting of the suspension.
While it is true that the Tribunal’s favorable reply to Spain’s central government is a limited one – the local legislation affected a region of less than 3 million inhabitants – it does underscore fundamental issues with vaccine mandates, apart even from the specific problems posed by an experimental injection that only obtained a “conditional” marketing authorization.
All the other provisions of the law, which include lockdowns, police-controlled isolation in case of positivity to an infectious disease and the like, were deemed compatible with Spain’s “organic law,” and their suspension was refused by the Court.
At the hearings prior to the decision the State Attorney argued that “the lifting of the suspension would seriously harm the interests of the citizens affected and therefore also the general interest.”
“This is because article 38.2 of Law 8/2008, on the health of Galicia (in the wording given by the sole article of Law 8/2021) establishes measures that not only affect fundamental rights (in violation of matters reserved to the organic law), but may also be irreversible, since once adopted they are impossible to reverse,” he told the Tribunal.
The judges set aside all other considerations to concentrate on the one main issue:
“We must focus our analysis on the weighing of the serious irreparable damage or damage difficult to repair for the general interest that, according to the State Attorney, would have to be produced if the lifting of the suspension of the challenged provision were to be decreed. In other words, the question now is to determine whether the damages alleged by the counsel for the State have the necessary gravity and consistency to prevail over the presumption of legitimacy of the challenged autonomous community law.”
For Spanish central authorities to go against the decisions of autonomous regions is in fact the exception, not the rule, a fact that adds weight to the Constitutional Tribunal’s refusal to green-light Galicia’s provisions for a local vaccine mandate.
In this case, the State Attorney reasoned that the law “encroached on exclusive State competence in matters of health coordination.”
This included the possibility for local authorities, in case of “emergency,” to “adopt preventive measures of recognition, treatment, hospitalization or control when there are rational indications suggest the existence of danger for the health of the population,” as well as “isolation at home, hospitalization in a hospital or isolation or internment in another appropriate place” for sick people and quarantining for contact cases, restrictions on freedom of movement and “prophylactic measures to prevent the disease, including vaccination or immunization.”
It was this last provision that prompted the Constitional Tribunal to examine whether the government of Galicia was going beyond its competency. The Tribunal argued:
“Although the procedural representations of the Xunta and the Parliament of Galicia deny that the contested precept provides for compulsory vaccination, the fact is that from its own literal wording and the regulatory context it can be inferred without difficulty that the vaccination measure can be established on a compulsory basis by the autonomous health authorities. Indeed, number 5 of article 38.2.b) refers to the ‘submission’ to measures for the prevention of transmissible diseases, ‘including vaccination.’ This provision has to be placed in relation to the provisions of article 41.bis d) of the Galician Health Law itself, which typifies as a minor infringement ‘the unjustified refusal to submit to preventive measures consisting of vaccination or immunization prescribed by the health authorities, in accordance with the provisions of this law.’ Such a refusal can be qualified as a serious infringement, in accordance with article 42.bis c), when it is liable to ‘produce a risk or serious damage to the health of the population’ and even, in accordance with article 43.bis d), as a very serious infringement if such risk or serious damage is considered ‘very serious’.”
Spain’s organic law contains no provision at all for mandatory vaccination, and such a mandate could have serious consequences, the Tribunal stated in order to justify the continued suspension of Galicia’s health bill regarding such an imposition on the population.
“Well, compulsory vaccination is not a preventive measure that is expressly contemplated in the Organic Law 3/1986, of special measures in public health, and involves a coercive bodily intervention that is practiced independently of the will of the citizen, who must submit to vaccination if this measure is adopted, under penalty of being sanctioned in case of unjustified refusal to be vaccinated, as provided in Article 44. bis of the Galician Health Law, in relation to articles 41.bis d), 42.bis c) and 43.bis d) of the same law. It can therefore be assessed in this case that the lifting of the suspension of the contested provision would be likely to cause certain and effective damages that may be irreparable or difficult to repair, insofar as vaccination may be imposed against the will of the citizen.”
It is obvious that the judges would not have reasoned in this way if vaccination were an insignificant act without potential harmful side-effects.
Instead, while justifying severe restrictions of freedom in the face of an emergency situation related to an infectious disease, the judges decided that forcing a citizen to receive a vaccine goes one step too far.
LifeSiteNews has produced an extensive COVID-19 vaccines resources page. View it here.