Florida is Right to End Vaccine Mandates; Now Every State Should Follow

When Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo and Governor Ron DeSantis announced plans to eliminate vaccine mandates across the state—some through administrative rule changes, others through future legislative action—they did more than propose new policy. They reminded the nation that the human body does not belong to the government.

Ladapo put it bluntly: “Who am I to tell you what you should put in your body?” The initiative, now moving through both regulatory and legislative channels, would curb the state’s power to compel injections for children or adults. If Florida succeeds, it will restore a principle that should have been universal all along: no government may force a medical procedure. Every state should adopt the same standard—no person should ever be compelled to take a shot, for any reason.

A Tale of Two States

The contrast between Florida and California could not be sharper. Florida is dismantling the machinery of medical coercion; California continues to refine it. During COVID, the two states became laboratories for opposite philosophies. Florida trusted its citizens to make their own medical decisions; California issued hundreds of sweeping executive orders, enforced strict mandates, and punished physicians who voiced dissent.

That divide has only deepened. Florida is moving to erase the state’s power to compel medical interventions; California, by contrast, keeps expanding it—tightening school-entry requirements, denying most medical exemptions, and defending laws that silence medical disagreement. The results are visible in trust itself: Floridians have emerged with open debate and functioning institutions, while many Californians still feel under siege, their legislature and governor having learned little from the excesses that alienated so many. If any state needs a moral reset on medical freedom, it is the one that once punished dissent in the name of science.

No Pandemic Exception to the Constitution

As Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo:

“Even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten.”

There is, as he implied, no pandemic exception to the Constitution.  Emergencies should never suspend fundamental rights, and there is no “collective-safety clause” hidden between the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.  The founders understood that fear is the oldest tool of tyranny.

Our Bill of Rights guarantees that no person may be deprived of liberty or bodily integrity without due process of law. Bodily autonomy is not a fringe idea—it is central.  After the Second World War, humanity wrote that promise again in blood.  The Nuremberg Code declared that “the voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.”  The Declaration of Helsinki and the Belmont Report reaffirmed the same truth: research and treatment alike require voluntary, informed choice.  When governments or institutions compel citizens to undergo medical procedures, they violate not only ethics but the legal foundations of modern democracy.

The oft-cited Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905) is overworked by mandate apologists.  Jacobson permitted limited state action during epidemics—but even it warned against arbitrariness.  It imposed a five-dollar fine, not a blank check for sweeping intrusions on bodily autonomy.  Modern constitutional jurisprudence—and Gorsuch’s reminder—demand that no emergency law override fundamental rights without the strictest scrutiny and narrowest limits.

The Utilitarian Mirage—or the Lord Farquaad Fallacy

The defense of mandates often rests on utilitarian logic: that the welfare of the many outweighs the liberty of the few.  But that reasoning collapses the moment the state demands that an individual assume bodily risk for others.  Law may restrain harmful acts; it cannot justly command surrender of bodily autonomy.  Once the state claims that authority, liberty becomes a conditional privilege.

In Shrek, the vain Lord Farquaad rallies his knights with the line, “Some of you will die, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take.”  It was meant as parody.  During COVID, it became policy.  Officials and pundits justified mandates with the same moral math: some will suffer, but the greater good demands it.  That is the utilitarian mirage in its purest form—tyranny masquerading as altruism.

The False Morality of “Protecting the Vulnerable”

One of the most persuasive slogans for mandates was the call to “protect the vulnerable.”  It sounds noble – until you see what it requires. It demands that one group accept medical risk or compliance on behalf of another. That is not solidarity; it is subjugation.

Worse, many who are medically “vulnerable” became so because past interventions harmed them.  To demand others undergo similar procedures for their sake repeats the logic of injury. Compassion must be voluntary. You may choose to take a risk for others; you may not be forced to.

Anticipating the Polio Panic

Every time school mandates are questioned, someone warns that polio will return.  The specter endures because it exploits fear, not reason – or evidence. Restoring choice does not abolish medicine; it restores informed consent, the principle that once made medicine trustworthy.

Those who decline certain vaccines are rarely uninformed; they are often cautious or responding to personal experience.  Treating them as heretics only deepens mistrust. Freedom is not recklessness – it is persuasion over punishment, education over edict.  A state that respects choice can still promote vaccination policy and protect the vulnerable without crossing the moral line into coercion.

The Cost of Coercion

Mandates did not merely breach law; they fractured society.  Jobs vanished, friendships dissolved, children lost years of learning, and public trust collapsed.  Coercion achieved compliance but destroyed legitimacy. As Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, now Director of the National Institutes of Health, warned years ago, once trust is lost, data alone cannot repair it.

Science Requires Humility

Knowledge evolves; risk–benefit calculations shift. Because science is never final, ethics must be. Consent is the fixed star by which free societies navigate uncertainty.  When officials punish doubt, they replace science with dogma. And if we accept coercion in health, we open the door to coercion in every other sphere—climate policy, diet, reproduction, schooling. The first forced injection is the seed of greater intrusions.

The Path Forward

Florida’s decision—and the recent federal shift toward “individual decision-making” for COVID-19 vaccines—marks the start of a long-overdue correction.  No emergency, algorithm, or so-called benevolent bureaucracy should ever compel a human being to undergo a medical procedure.

Let Florida’s rollback become the benchmark.  Let every state follow.  And let no future panic ever again justify turning people into medical instruments.  Consent is not a policy choice—it is the moral foundation upon which every free society stands.