Any immunity that Congress has pretended to give Pfizer, is highly questionable if it is not in violation of the Seventh Amendment stopping people from their right to claims against Pfizer et al. Even looking at the PREP Act Immunity from Liability for COVID-19 Vaccinators, it cannot afford immunity for willful misconduct. What we are dealing with is a statutory grant of immunity to Pfizer and others to create vaccines with immunity.
42 U.S. Code § 300aa–22,
“No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death associated with the administration of a vaccine after October 1, 1988, if the injury or death resulted from side effects that were unavoidable even though the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper directions and warnings.”
The 7th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was intended to protect the right of every American citizen to a trial by a jury of his peers in a civil court case. The writers’ objective in drafting this amendment as an addition to the Bill of Rights was to ensure that the government would not eliminate the practice of trial by jury. The major concern here was that, if trials were decided solely by judges, the judges would, more often than not, side with the government. This would, in turn, give the government too much power. To explore this concept, consider the following 7th Amendment definition.
There was a federal appeals court that declined to grant an injunction against Indiana University’s vaccine mandate after it was challenged in a lawsuit by students who said it violates their constitutional rights. That was a separate question from what I am raising here. The Indiana case dealt with only the constitutionality of vaccination mandates. That did not address whether or not the vaccines were ever properly tested and were in fact causing harm.
We must separate the legal argument for the objection to the mandates were all based on individual rights as in the abortion rhetoric, it’s my body, my decision. The government can generally regulate its own employees, or those it even funds with Medicaid/Medicare. Hence, that raised the issue of people with valid religious or medical objections. All of that still proceeded upon the basic assumption that the vaccines were legal and caused no harm.
The Biden Administration virtually conceded that it did not have the constitutional authority to force every American to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Still, the Biden Administration tried to circumvent that constitutional limitation by having the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which regulates within the U.S. Labor Department workplace safety, rather than public health. OSHA’s emergency order required all employers with 100 or more employees to demand that their employees either be fully vaccinated or get a COVID-19 test at least once a week.
There is another issue that surfaced with COVID and that was that Biden had agencies issuing unconstitutional orders without authority from Congress. The Centers for Disease Control issued a prohibition against tenant evictions. That demonstrated that the Biden Administration was acting in a tyrannical manner circumventing both the Constitution and Congress. The eviction decree made it to the Supreme Court which held such a decree could only be issued with Congressional legislative action. When Congress refused, the Biden administration just ignored the Supreme Court anyhow. Then on Aug. 26, 2001, the Supreme Court in a Per Curiam decision (whole court), the Court struck down the Biden eviction moratorium. This is dealing with Biden’s abuse of executive orders ignoring Congress and the Supreme Court. That was really tyrannical. Hence, his vaccine mandate raises the very same question of Congress’ delegation of authority to administrative agencies that never granted such authority and Biden’s unconstitutional circumventing of Congress.
My question remains different If the 7th Amendment was to prevent judges who would always rule in favor of the government, then can Congress pass any statute that grants immunity to Pfizer when there is an exception even to Qualified Immunity of government agents when they act deliberately? If a Prosecutor can be charged when he DELIBERATELY violates your Constitutional Rights, then so can everyone at Pfizer!
Get at it, Lawyers! Do what you were intended to do when you took your oath.
