Spillane v. Lamont

Summary

The court held that sovereign immunity required dismissal of the plaintiffs’ constitutional challenges to the repeal of the religious exemption from school vaccination requirements because those claims failed as a matter of law. The repeal was a neutral and generally applicable law rationally related to protecting public health, and it did not violate equal protection or the state constitutional right to a free public education. The court held that the statutory religious-freedom claim could proceed because the statute waives sovereign immunity for free-exercise challenges to legislation and was not displaced by the later vaccination law.