In 2023, the two most important rights regarding medical freedom and back-to-school registration are the right to exempt from vaccines, and the right to opt-out of mental health assessments (or SEL compliance monitoring programs which are being called mental health surveys). These opt-out rights apply to daycares, K-12 schools, and colleges. These rights also apply to healthcare employees and all civilian employees. This article will explain these rights and the current lawsuits defending these rights, with a focus on Colorado, but applicable to all states.
Vaccine Exemptions
The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) tracks vaccines requirements and exemptions in all states. Anyone can freely access the requirements of their state at NVIC’s State Vaccine Laws page. CDPHE also lists Colorado’s vaccine requirements for daycare, K-12 schools, and college on their website.
At this time, Colorado schools DO NOT REQUIRE a COVID19 vaccine. Even with the CDC ACIP “recommendation” for the COVID vaccine, all existing COVID vaccines to date are EUA labeled as experimental and are completely voluntary according to law, with right to informed consent or refusal. EUA drugs and experimental vaccines cannot be legally mandated by any entity, as established by Doe v Rumsfeld, in 2003. The FDA-approved versions of the COVID19 vaccines have not been manufactured. Therefore, students do not need a COVID19 vaccine exemption, according to laws pertaining to EUA drugs. During COVID19, universities created mandates and “guidelines” for exemptions for COVID19 vaccines which have no legal basis in Colorado Revised Statutes C.R.S. 23-5-128. CDPHE remains silent about illegal employer and university mandates for the EUA COVID vaccines.
A brief update on how Colorado legislation changed its vaccine exemption requirements in 2020 with Senate Bill 163 is included on NVIC’s Colorado page.
“On July 10, 2020 SB163 was signed into law and consolidated the personal and religious exemption into a “non-medical” exemption; created official exemption forms; and required third party approval of “non-medical” exemptions. Vaccine providers may refuse to sign “non-medical” exemption forms and a certificate of completion from CDPHE’s online education module can be used instead.”
As a clarification, prior to 2020, parents and adult students could submit statements of philosophical or religious exemption and doctors’ letters of contraindication to meet school requirements. Since 1978, this documentation was maintained at the local level between the parents and school administrators and safe guarded both public health and medical privacy. Historically, about 3% of students in Colorado claimed vaccine exemptions. Since the actual goal of the state is zero exemptions of any type, the Democrat Supermajority in the Colorado legislature exerted state control of the vaccine exemption process in 2020. SB163 was pushed through the legislature during the pandemic while limiting testimony, from the thousands of people who showed up to testify in opposition on an unprecedented Sunday hearing, to a total of 90 minutes. SB163 accomplished two objectives for medical surveillance. First, it created a state exemption form, which most doctors will not sign in fear of retaliation by state licensing boards. Second, SB163 created an online education module and state certificate for exemptions which also captures parent and student data in the state tracking database, with coercive reminder, recall, and home visit functions. SB163 gave the state intimidation power over doctors and coercion power over parents.
Under prior local control, schools could only share aggregate data with the state, because FERPA prohibits schools from sharing the personally identifying information (PII) of students with any entity without prior written consent. With SB163, the state of Colorado accomplished its long-term goal to bypass FERPA and track personally identifying information. Healthy People 2030 goals include making individual vaccine compliance data available in real time and anywhere, with IIS data linked to RealID.
Opting-Out of the Vaccine Tracking Database
All states have an Immunization Information System or IIS maintained by their state health department. In 1992 these databases were grant funded to track access to vaccines for infants in rural areas. In 2001, with pharmaceutical lobbyists and federal funding, these databases grew into coercive compliance registries to include all children, while the vaccine schedule grew to 72 doses of vaccines. Since 2007, adults have been included in the IIS. Everyone who received a COVID19 vaccine was added to the IIS, with or without their knowledge or consent. This is legal because state law made IIS an “opt-out” database, and not an “opt-in” database. Why? Because no one would opt-in.
In Colorado, I have previously summarized ten reasons why everyone should opt-out of CIIS in “Medical Surveillance from Womb to Tomb: Colorado Immunization Information System” (April 2022). It is common for vaccine providers and school administrators to omit information about inclusion in the CIIS tracking database or the right to opt-out. CDPHE blatantly lies to the public by claiming that CIIS is “confidential” while sharing the data with undisclosed entities. The instructions to opt-out of CIIS are linked on CDPHE’s website. However, there is no true opt-out, because opting-out does not remove an individual’s name, date of birth, gender, city, county, and zip code from the registry. This data is included in a secondary database. There is currently no accountability for CDPHE and how CIIS operates without any consumer protections.
There has been confusion about whether the online education module captures people’s data in CIIS. During the passage of SB163, bill sponsors (Sen. Mullica (D), Sen. Gonzales (D), Sen. Priola (D)) falsely assured the public that there would be a option that would allow parents to take the “vaccines are safe and effective” education module, print an exemption certificate, and not be included in CIIS. NVIC and Colorado Health Choice Alliance have confirmed with CDPHE that information from the online education module is retained for upload to CIIS, unless an opt-out is already on file. The online education module states otherwise when selecting the “print only” option for the “non-medical” exemption certificate. This is one of many areas in which CDPHE lacks transparency with the public as required by the SMART Act.
If you or your student have opted-out of CIIS, you should still remain vigilant about safeguarding this private medical data and educating your school administrators about FERPA. In “Governor Polis and CDPHE conspire to violate FERPA for illegal student surveillance” (September 2022), I detailed how Gov. Polis used an Executive Order during the pandemic to order schools to violate FERPA by sharing PII in student records so that CDPHE could expand a public vaccine dashboard, designed to shame schools, daycares, and colleges which fall below 90% vaccine compliance. A school that falls below 80% in vaccine compliance is color coded as red, despite herd immunity established at 60% natural immunity.
CIIS does not track or report natural immunity, only “vaccinated,” “in process” (of getting vaccines), and “missing (vaccine) records.” In “CDPHE proposes vaccine rule changes for online students and natural immunity” (December 2022), I explained how CDPHE Board of Health has started to pass rules that negate proof of natural immunity for select viruses. Titers testing documentation indicating natural immunity is a legal exemption in Colorado and many states. CDPHE has also completely abandoned the reality of at-risk groups. For example, CDPHE only recognizes vaccine-based immunity for Hepatitis B, a sexually transmitted disease prevalent in people who share drug needles, prostitutes, and men who have sex with men. There is no rational reason to require this vaccine for students.
Lawsuits for COVID Vaccine Mandates in Healthcare and Colleges
There are two noteworthy lawsuits against COVID-19 vaccine mandates for adults. First, the University of Colorado (CU) medical campus lawsuit has 18 plaintiffs of faculty and students who claim workplace discrimination. CU’s policy against religious exemption to vaccination stands to violate the religious freedom provisions of the state and federal constitutions. CU went beyond verifying “sincerely held beliefs” per the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, and CU created arbitrary religious inquisition criteria such as approving only religious beliefs that opposed all immunizations (not based on ingredients), and disapproving religious beliefs that were personal and not part of an organized religion. Plaintiffs, facing termination, resigned or withdrew from CU. Judging the sincerity of personal religious beliefs is a violation of the First Amendment.
As reported in Colorado Politics, CU acted as if it were ignorant of clearly established religious vaccine exemptions in place for schools since 1978 and also with an official state form in place since 2020 (as previously detailed in this article) that does not require religious belief scrutiny nor approval by the university:
“[CU] also contended the school officials involved with administering the policy were entitled to qualified immunity, which shields government employees from civil liability unless they violate a person’s clearly-established legal rights. ‘(T)here was (and remains) no clearly established right to a religious exemption,’ wrote attorneys for CU Anschutz. ‘Neither the Supreme Court nor the Tenth Circuit has held that a public university or other public education institution violates its students’ constitutional rights when it declines to provide religious exemptions to a COVID-19 vaccination requirement.’”
If you want to donate to the legal fund in support of the plaintiffs at CU and set legal precedent against egregious violations of religious freedoms, you can donate to Colorado Healthcare Providers for Freedom.
The other COVID-19 college vaccine mandate lawsuit to follow is at Rutgers University, and it could set national precedent. According to Children’s Health Defense, “Rutgers’ policy is unconstitutional because COVID-19 vaccines are experimental and administered under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), and because students had the right to refuse an unwanted and potentially unsafe medical procedure.” The plaintiffs’ attorney argued that COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission, which was the basis for the mandate for students, while there was no mandate for faculty. The plaintiffs’ attorney also argued that Rutgers has conflicts of interests due to its work with manufacturers in clinical trials of the COVID-19 vaccines. Rutgers attorneys argued that faculty and staff did not have mandates because they have collective bargaining, which is a glaring admission that mandates were not based on health risks of age groups. Rutgers also argued that it had discretion to mandate the EUA vaccine because ACIP recommended it.
Opting Out of Mental Health Surveys
The pandemic lockdowns created a mental health crisis in students and young adults. The same legislators who allowed those school closures to persist introduced a bill in 2023 to implement a school mental health assessment. However, the mental health assessment is not actually an evidenced-based instrument to diagnose a mental health disorder per the DSM. Instead, the BIMAS or Behavior Intervention Monitoring Assessment System is a SEL compliance monitoring tool. In “School Mental Health Surveys Are a Tool for Expanding Pharmaceutical Drugs to Students” (March 2023), I explained why parents should opt-out of all mental health surveys at schools, including IMatter and Healthy Kids Colorado Survey. These surveys are data mining students for highly sensitive information that could have lifelong repercussions in the hands of the state, such as restrictions on future gun ownership. This information will also find its way into third party referrals for counseling, drugs, and gender dysphoria treatments. Colorado has revised laws during the Polis administration, giving minors as young as 12 years old the ability to consent to treatment without parental consent. Parents can opt- out of these surveys with a written statement to their schools to be kept in the student file.
Overall, the state’s profitable 100% vaccine compliance goals will not respect natural immunity of the individual, and subsequently vaccine exemptions have been under attack in legislation for the past decade. The vaccine tracking databases have given enforcement power to appointed “public health experts,” most of whom at the local level lack expertise in proven disease prevention—nutrition, exercise, sunlight, & sanitary living conditions. Due to a lack of accountability for illegal mandates of experimental drugs and a lack of remorse for discrimination by colleges and employers, “We the People” cannot trust the state with vaccine data, and therefore can exercise the right to opt-out of CIIS. Likewise, due to the lack of transparency in health data sharing, “We the People” cannot trust the state with alleged health surveys or alleged mental health surveys. “We the People” can opt-out of tyranny, like our founding fathers at the Boston Tea Party opted-out of taxation without representation. Data is the currency of any future social credit system. Will you opt-out or comply?
“Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.” John Basil Barnhill, 1914
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