Spillane v. Lamont

Summary

The court held that sovereign immunity barred the plaintiffs' constitutional challenges to the repeal of Connecticut's religious exemption from school vaccination requirements because those claims failed as a matter of law. The repeal was a neutral law of general applicability rationally related to protecting public health, did not violate equal protection, and imposed a reasonable enrollment condition rather than denying the state constitutional right to education. The court nevertheless held that the plaintiffs' statutory religious-freedom claim could proceed because the statute waives sovereign immunity for free-exercise challenges to legislation and was not implicitly repealed or rendered inapplicable by the later vaccination act.