US Supreme Court did not issue order against COVID-19 vaccines – The Associated Press

CLAIM: The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that COVID-19 vaccines are not vaccines and that they cause “irreparable damage.”

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The Supreme Court has issued no such ruling. Posts on social media are reviving a long debunked claim, while some social media users are misrepresenting an unrelated October ruling by a New York state Supreme Court judge. That judge said New York City sanitation workers fired for not getting COVID-19 shots should be reinstated and given back pay, but did not rule on the efficacy of the vaccines themselves.

THE FACTS: Claims that the Supreme Court has declared COVID-19 vaccines dangerous, or banned them altogether, have become a fixture of online conspiracy theories. In recent days, the claims have reemerged, with some on social media misrepresenting a real court ruling from New York to bolster the bogus narrative.

One Instagram post shared a screenshot of a headline reading, “The Supreme Court In The US Has Ruled That The Covid Pathogen is Not A Vaccine, Is Unsafe, And Must Be Avoided At All Costs — Supreme Court Has Canceled Universal Vax.”

A Twitter user, meanwhile, shared a tweet stating: “US Supreme Court ruling: Covid vaccines are not vaccines. In its decision, the Supreme Court confirms that the damage caused by Covid’s mRNA gene therapies is irreparable. Because the Supreme Court is the highest court in the United States, there are no further appeals.”

The tweet had received more than 8,000 likes and more than 5,000 shares as of Friday.

But the Supreme Court has made no such ruling. The case cannot be found in the court’s online docket, which contains the status of cases filed since the beginning of the court’s 2001 term, both pending and decided.

Jamal Greene, a professor at Columbia University’s law school who is an expert on constitutional law, confirmed this assessment, telling The Associated Press in an email that “there is no such ruling.”

Instead, social media users are sharing baseless articles and an unrelated ruling from a lower court in New York City.

The headline in the Instagram post comes from a conspiracy website called American Media Group. The post itself revives the false claim that the court made such an order in response to a lawsuit filed by anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and “a group of scientists” against billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci and “Big Pharma.” It also refers to Kennedy as “Senator Kennedy,” though it was his father, also named Robert F. Kennedy, who served as a senator before he was assassinated in 1968.

Similar claims have spread on conspiracy sites in the past, and have been debunked by the younger Kennedy himself. “The article about the Supreme Court is misinformation,” he told the AP in 2021. “The quote is fabricated. Clearly somebody made it up and is promoting it because the same quote keeps coming back no matter how many times I deny it. The same article keeps reappearing.”

Meanwhile, the court ruling shared by some users also does not show the U.S. Supreme Court saying “vaccines are not vaccines” or that they cause “irreparable damage.”

It is actually an Oct. 24 ruling from New York state Supreme Court Justice Ralph Porzio, whose court is on Staten Island in New York City. Porzio ruled that 16 New York City sanitation workers who were fired in February after not complying with vaccination requirements for city workers should be reinstated and given back pay, the AP reported.

The ruling never says COVID-19 vaccines are not vaccines, nor that they cause irreparable damage.

He notes that we have learned through the pandemic that the vaccine “is not absolute” and breakthrough cases occur “even from those who have been vaccinated and boosted.” But he also writes that his ruling “is not a commentary on the efficacy of vaccination, but about how we are treating our first responders, the ones who worked day-to-day through the height of the pandemic.” The city appealed the ruling the day after it was issued.

New York City still mandates that all city employees, including those in the Department of Sanitation, must be vaccinated against COVID-19. Exemptions are given only for documented medical or religious reasons.

American Media Group did not respond to a request for comment.

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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.