Virginia Republican Attorney General issued an advisory opinion on Friday concluding that public universities of the State can not require vaccination against COVID-19 as a condition for enrollment or assistance. The adviser invests an opinion of his democratic predecessor that came to the opposite conclusion last year.
The new opinion of Virginia Attorney General Jason S. Miyares comes on the heels of an executive directive on January 15. Republican Governor, Glenn Youngkin, which prohibits Vaccination Requirements from COVID-19 for state employees, including employees of higher education public institutions.
In his advisory opinion, Miyares wrote that, while the General Assembly of Virginia has conferred general powers to the board of visitors for the public institutions of higher education and granted those boards of directors "wide discretion" to establish Various policies, also approved the legislation required by vaccination against diphtheria, tetanus, poliomyelitis, measles, rubella and mumps before enrollment in a four-year public institution.
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Miyares wrote that "the most specific status governed by student vaccination, has priority over the most general authority provided to meetings."
Miyares wrote that, although the legislature could approve a law that requires immunization COVID-19, has not been done. "Visitor boards may not exert an implicit power to require a certain vaccine when a vaccine when a Specific Statute Rigue Vaccination Excludes ".
Virginia universities are already obliged to vaccines, other than people who are included in the Statute. Miyares quoted. The University of Virginia, for example, also requires students to vacve against hepatitis B, meningitis and chickenpox, as well as Covid. googleg.cmd.push (function () googleg.display ("dfp-ad-article_in_article");););
The opinion of Miyares contradicts the former General Mark R. Herring, a Democrat, who wrote in an opinion last year that demanding vaccines as a condition of assistance in person was within the authority of visitors' meetings of The institutions of higher education.
"The General Assembly has confected the various visitor directive boards with extensive specific and implicit discretion in their management of the state colleges and universities," Herring wrote.
Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, a teacher at the University of California Hastings College of the Law who studies the Law of Vaccines, said both opinions are legitimate legal interpretations.
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"There is an open legal question about whether establishing these vaccines, the state is excluded G Add more vaccines To the list. It is a clear thing to disagree, "he said.
"There is a political motivation to choose an interpretation over another," Reiss added ", but it is still a valid interpretation."
Multiple Virginia Public universities have required Vaccination of COVID-19 for students, including George Mason, James Madison, Norfolk State, Virginia Comminwealth and Virginia State Universities; The College of William and Mary; Virginia Tech; and the University of Virginia.
Spokespersons for several Virginia universities with vaccine mandates for students said they were reviewing the opinion of the Attorney General.
Spokespersons also cited high vaccination rates among their students. and employees.
Mary-Hope G. Vass, a spokesman for J
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