Opinion: Freedom Over Security — One Reader’s Case Against Pandemic-Era Vaccine Mandates

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[Photos submitted by Jolynn Kottke]

Because individual liberty is the ultimate measure of human sovereignty, freedom should take precedence over collective security. The United States Constitution was never designed to guarantee a risk-free existence; its primary purpose was to secure the blessings of liberty for future generations (U.S. Const. pmbl.). Although security may promise protection from fear, history demonstrates that freedom is ultimately more valuable. Security preserves life, but freedom gives life its meaning, dignity, and autonomy.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, this balance was fundamentally altered as authorities enacted sweeping vaccine mandates that restricted medical autonomy. To justify this expansion of power, officials relied heavily on Jacobson v. Massachusetts ( Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905), a Supreme Court decision that has since become the cornerstone of modern mandate arguments. By leveraging employers, universities, and other institutions to impose economic consequences for noncompliance, authorities transformed a narrowly limited public health precedent into a broad system of behavioral enforcement.

The most significant distortion of Jacobson lies in the underlying public health rationale. The 1905 ruling rested on the harm principle: an individual’s liberty may be restricted only to prevent direct physical harm to others. At the time, the smallpox vaccine was widely understood to halt infection and transmission, making an unvaccinated person a direct threat to the surrounding community. During COVID-19, however, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged that vaccination did not prevent infection or transmission ( CDC Director Rochelle Walensky (2021) ) Applying the same legal framework to an intervention that primarily reduced disease severity fundamentally changed the justification for limiting bodily autonomy. When a medical intervention does not prevent transmission, the decision to accept or decline it becomes a matter of personal risk rather than public harm.

The historical facts surrounding Jacobson further illustrate the limits of the ruling. In 1902, during a smallpox outbreak in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Pastor Henning Jacobson refused vaccination after citing previous adverse reactions within his family. The resulting Supreme Court decision upheld only a modest five-dollar fine, roughly equivalent to $150 today. The law did not authorize forced vaccination, and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court explicitly recognized that the state lacked authority to physically compel the procedure. Justice John Marshall Harlan further warned that government police powers could become so arbitrary and unreasonable that courts would have a duty to intervene. This caution established an important constitutional safeguard against excessive state power .

Rather than physically compelling vaccination, modern authorities pursued compliance through indirect means. Government agencies encouraged public and private institutions to impose employment consequences, deny exemptions, and restrict participation in everyday life. This approach achieved widespread compliance while avoiding the constitutional questions that direct physical force would have raised. When individuals must choose between unwanted medical treatment and economic isolation, genuine voluntary consent becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish from coercion.

The erosion of medical and religious exemptions further illustrates this expansion of authority. Historically, these exemptions protected individual conscience and the physician-patient relationship. During the pandemic, many became increasingly difficult to obtain or were eliminated altogether. California’s Senate Bill 276 expanded state oversight of medical exemptions by empowering regulators to review physicians issuing higher numbers of exemptions, creating pressure that critics argued discouraged individualized medical judgment. At the same time, many religious objections were rejected by employers, schools, and universities, further narrowing avenues for personal choice.

Pandemic-era vaccine mandates illustrate what historian Robert Higgs described as the political ratchet effect: powers acquired during emergencies are often far easier for governments to obtain than for citizens to reclaim (Robert Higgs Crisis and Leviathan – Ratchet Effect).  Society should reject the notion that public safety requires the surrender of bodily autonomy. When governments use indirect economic pressure to accomplish what they cannot constitutionally compel by force, the protections guaranteed by the Bill of Rights are weakened. Because individual liberty is the ultimate measure of human sovereignty, freedom must remain the nation’s highest political value.

[Jolynn Kottke]