NYC Can Mandate Flu Vaccination For Children

Influenza vaccinations are required for 150,000 NYC children
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(Precision Vaccinations News)

New York City Health Department received some regulatory good news regarding its children vaccination policy.

The State of New York Court of Appeals decided on June 28, 2018, that New York City has the authority to mandate flu vaccinations for children attending city-regulated childcare or school-based programs.

The Appeals Court’s unanimous decision said that a 2013 rule enacted by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene will stand.

Richard Dearing, Chief of the Appeals Division of the NYC Law Department, said: “We are pleased with this unanimous decision, which recognizes the ‘very direct connection’ between the Board’s flu vaccine rule and ‘the preservation of health and safety,’ and agreed that the rule is ‘squarely within’ with the Board’s delegated powers and consistent with state law," said in a statement.

Parents of children enrolled in NYC regulated facilities sued the city in 2015 over the rule. They argued the city’s health department did not have the regulatory authority to impose the vaccine and that state law preempted the action.

Health Commissioner Dr. Mary T. Bassett, said: “The severity of this past influenza season reminds us of how deadly influenza can be. The influenza vaccine is the best protection against seasonal influenza for everyone.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 174 children died last year due to influenza complications.

“This decision will help us protect more than 150,000 children in City-regulated daycare and preschools across the city,” said Dr. Bassett in a statement.

As a matter of state law, Public Health Law 2164 requires every child between the age of 2 months and 18 years to receive vaccines against certain enumerated diseases. Absent proof of these immunizations, the Public Health Law prohibits officials in charge of “any public, private or parochial child caring center, day nursery, day care agency, nursery school, kindergarten, elementary, intermediate or secondary school” within the state from allowing any unvaccinated child to attend for more than 14 days.

However, a statutory exception permits admission of an unvaccinated child if a physician certifies that “immunization may be detrimental to [the] child’s health” or if the child’s parent or guardian objects based on “genuine and sincere religious beliefs.

The NYC charter empowers the city’s health department “with jurisdiction to regulate all matters affecting health in the city of New York” and to “supervise the reporting and control of communicable and chronic disease and conditions hazardous to life and health.”

This decision could open the door for other municipalities to mandate vaccination requirements in facilities they regulate if local laws allow it, reported Law.com. 

Judge Leslie Stein wrote in this opinion ‘The state law, which mandates certain vaccines for children, is a floor, rather than a ceiling on the city’s statutory authority.’

“Nothing in [state] Public Health Law Section 2164 suggests that a list of vaccinations set forth therein is an exclusive one that may not be expanded by local municipalities to which the authority to regulate vaccinations has been delegated,” Judge Stein wrote.

Its power as a regulator actually dates back to an 1866 act of the state legislature, Stein wrote, which empowered the city’s then-health department mandate vaccines “as in its opinion the protection of the public health may require.”

NYC has required smallpox vaccines of minors since 1866, for example, Judge Stein wrote.

 

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