Stull v. Reber

Citations

• 215 Pa. 156
• 64 A. 419
• 1906 Pa. LEXIS 755

Syllabus

<p>Constitutional law — Vaccination of school children — Police power — Act of June 18, 1895, P. L. 203 — ■Local legislation — School law.</p> <p>The Act of June 18, 1895, P. L. 203, requiring the exclusion from the public schools of children who have not been vaccinated is a valid exercise of the police power of the state. The act is not local legislation, because township school districts may possibly not be included in the act; nor does it contravene sec. 1, article X of the constitution requiring the maintenance of an efficient system of public schools wherein all children above the age of six years may be educated.</p> <p>It was not the legislative intent that sections 11 and 12 of the act should be read together, and the right under section 12 to exclude unvaccinated children should be confined to the schools in the districts mentioned in section 11, namely, those in which smallpox is actually prevalent. The objects of the two sections are distinctively different. The fact that there had been no smallpox in a particular community for a period of forty years, will not relieve such community from the application of the act.</p> <p>In construing the act and applying it, the courts cannot take into consideration that vaccination will not take on some children, and that a physician cannot certify that such child has been successfully vaccinated.</p> <p>The fact that vaccination is the infliction of a disease, cowpox, on the subject, does not involve in the application of the act, a trespass upon the reserved rights of the individual which are beyond the reach of even the police power.</p> <p>The act of June 18, 1895, is not a penal statute, and is not to be construed or administered by the rigid technical rules applicable to penal laws, but fairly according to its intent, neither narrowing it to the letter to the exclusion of cases clearly within such intent, or stretching it beyond its legitimate scope to cover matters not clearly meant to be included.</p>