Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares has issued his first official opinion, and it packs quite a punch for proponents of medical freedom. Miyares’ opinion, issued on Friday, stated that he believes that public universities in the state of Virginia cannot mandate the Covid vaccine for students as a requirement for enrollment or in-person attendance.
This opinion, which is sure to be popular with the red-blooded conservatives who also cast their vote for newly sworn-in Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, scores another win for freedom-loving Americans who have seen their constitutional rights trampled on in the educational setting.
Additionally, Miyares states in his opinion that while the legislation imposed by the General Assembly authorized public institutions of higher education to assist the Department of Health in administering vaccines to campuses, he acknowledged that it did not, “grant such institutions power to impose vaccine requirements.”
The attorney general’s opinion is another step forward for those who have been fighting for individual liberty in the face of the Biden administration’s push to implement nationwide vaccine mandates. In January, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down one of Biden’s proposed vaccine mandates for private employers, setting a precedent that even progressive corporate companies like Starbucks and General Electric have had to acknowledge, rolling back their vaccine mandates in workplaces across the country.
Even the famously progressive state of New York struck down the enforcement of mask mandates in the New York Supreme Court in January, with Justice Rademaker calling it “unconstitutional” and “null, void, and unenforceable.”
Further, Virginia Attorney General Miyares concluded his statement on the legality of vaccine mandates on campus by sharing that he himself had been vaccinated and boosted, “and encourages everyone to get the vaccination,” while reiterating that “nowhere in the Code of Virginia does the law say that Virginia public institutions can require vaccinations as a condition of enrollment or in-person attendance.”
