The shoe campaign was dismissed on legal and ethical grounds by Prof. T. Patrick Hill of Rutgers’ Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, where he teaches public health law and ethics.
Hill said there was more than a century of legal precedent upholding states’ rights to mandate vaccinations, dating back to the 1905 U.S. Supreme Court case Jacobson v Massachusetts.
Since then, New Jersey has imposed a host of vaccine mandates on school children at various grade levels, starting with Polio, tetanus, measles, rubella and others in 1975, up through Hepatitis B shots required as of 2004 in grades 9-12.