Catholic father, claiming religious objections, sues over mandatory vaccinations

From The Staten Island Advance in New York City:

Subjecting his children to required vaccinations would “defile” God’s creation of the immune system, anger God and constitute a sacrilege, maintains a Bay Terrace father, who opposes immunization on religious grounds, according to a recently filed lawsuit.

A practicing Roman Catholic, the father, identified in an affidavit only as “P.R.,” maintains “children are born from the hand of God” and immunizing them “demonstrates a great lack of faith in the gift of health and the promise of protection that we are given at birth and through baptism when we put our child in the hands of the Lord.”

P.R. has sued the city and state in Brooklyn federal court, seeking to return his 4-year-old son to his pre-kindergarten class. The boy was removed on Dec. 23 because he didn’t have the necessary immunizations, said court documents.

The father had previously sought an exemption on religious grounds, but the city Education Department denied it, court papers said.

The man’s 6-year-old son was allowed to remain in his first-grade class, said his lawyer, Patricia Finn, who declined to identify the school.

The state Public Health Law requires that children be vaccinated against 11 communicable diseases, including mumps, measles, polio, diphtheria, hepatitis B and rubella.

“They are clearly upset,” Ms. Finn said Monday, referring to her client and his wife in a telephone interview.

“Every day that the plaintiff’s religious freedoms are burdened is a day that his Free Exercise rights are violated,” she wrote in court papers.

The suit is the second of its kind filed in the past 11 months by a Staten Island parent seeking vaccination exemptions for their children on religious grounds.

In February of last year, West Brighton resident Dina Check, another devout Catholic,sued the Education Department alleging religious-freedom and due-process violations after her daughter, then 6, was barred from attending PS 35, Sunnyside. The girl hadn’t been immunized.

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