Kentucky Appeals Court Rules Against Anti-Vaxxer Student Barred from School

The anti-vaxxer high school student who was banned from school for not having his shots — and then lost his lawsuit against the Northern Kentucky Health Department — just lost his case again.

The state banned 18-year-old Jerome Kunkel and other unvaccinated kids from attending school and extracurricular activities amid a massive chickenpox outbreak, prompting the lawsuit he filed in March alleging violations of religious freedom. He lost the lawsuit in April and then — irony of ironies — came down with chickenpox in May.

Now, a Kentucky appeals court has sided with the state’s health department and with the first judge who upheld that department’s decision. The Kentucky Court of Appeals said no to his request for an injunction in the case yesterday, effectively ending his legal challenges.

This is just one more in a series of losses for young Kunkel, who mistakenly believes that the chickenpox vaccine contains the tissue of aborted fetuses, something he says would violate his strict Catholic faith. His delusion would violate his other delusion. (Indeed, even the National Catholic Bioethics Center says the vaccine doesn’t contain aborted cells and is therefore okay for believers to use.)

In other words, he’s demonstrably wrong on his own terms.

Kunkel and other anti-vaxxers don’t understand that chickenpox is a highly contagious disease, and that it can even cause death. It’s time the kids at this school just get their damn shots already.

(Image via Shutterstock. Thanks to everyone for the link)