In 1777, Washington issued a mandate that his soldiers had to be vaccinated against smallpox, then known as variola. While British troops had built up an immunity to smallpox, the American troops had not. The Constitutional authority for vaccine mandates was decided in 1905 in Jacobson v Massachusetts. He lost his case in district court and Commonwealth court (Massachusetts is called a commonwealth, not a state), and again in the U. S. Supreme Court. Jim Elliott served sixteen years in the Montana Legislature as a state representative and state senator.

Source: Wall Street Journal November 08, 2021 21:36 UTC