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Page Number: 12

12 

DR. A v. HOCHUL 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

some faith leaders, the Pope included, have encouraged vac-
cination.  If so many other religious persons are willing to
be vaccinated, it is tempting enough to ask:  What can be so 
wrong with coercing the few who are not? 

By  now,  though,  we  should  know  the  costs  that  come 
when this Court stands silent as majorities invade the con-
stitutional rights of the unpopular and unorthodox.  More 
than 80 years ago, in the shadow of a looming second world 
war,  local  governments  across  the  country  rushed  to  en-
courage displays of national unity.  A public school in Min-
ersville, Pennsylvania, did its part by requiring all students
to  stand  daily  and  salute  the  American  flag.    But  Lillian 
and William Gobitas would not oblige.  As Jehovah’s Wit-
nesses,  they  believed  they  could  not  pledge  fealty  to  any-
thing or anyone except God.  When the children refused to 
salute, the school expelled them.  See S. Peters, Judging Je-
hovah’s Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the Dawn of 
the Rights Revolution 19–38 (2000) (Peters). 

When  the  Gobitas  family  sought  this  Court’s  interven-
tion,  it  demurred.  The  Court  ruled  that  the  Constitution 
does not “compel exemption from doing what society thinks
necessary  for  the  promotion  of  some  great  common  end.” 
Minersville  School  Dist.  v.  Gobitis,  310  U. S.  586,  593 
(1940).  In doing so, the Court not only erred in the small
matter of the children’s last name; it erred in the most fun-
damental of things.  It took the view that the collective was 
more important than the individual—and that the demands 
of an impending emergency were more pressing than hold-
ing fast to the timeless promises of our Constitution.  Id., at 
596.  In  the  weeks  that  followed  the  decision,  Witnesses 
across  the  country  suffered  hundreds  of  physical  attacks.
Peters 72–95. 

Eventually, the Court changed course and overruled Go-
bitis.  In  West  Virginia  State  Bd.  of  Ed.  v.  Barnette,  the 
Court finally acknowledged what had been true all along—