(The Lion) — Parents of a 6-year-old boy whom a public school vaccinated for COVID-19 despite their objections are asking the U.S. Supreme Court for relief.

Dario “Tony” and Shujen Politella appealed to the high court following a Vermont Supreme Court ruling that the school and its officials were protected by the federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP).

The act, passed by Congress in 2005 and authorized for COVID in March of 2020, grants immunity to anyone involved in issuing the “emergency” vaccines. The only exception is for cases of “willful misconduct” that result in “death or serious physical injury,” AP reports.

News of the ruling has created a stir on social media, with some claiming the state’s highest court authorized schools to vaccinate children whenever they wish, without consequence, though the immunity is only supposed to apply to anyone protected under the PREP Act, AP Fact Check argues.

Still, what happened to the Politella’s son, Leo (L.P. in the lawsuit) is disturbing to many – particularly since the boy’s parents took affirmative steps to prevent the vaccination.

Indeed, a few days before a scheduled vaccine clinic, the boy’s father visited the school to make known his desire that his son not receive the “vaccines.” He even offered to keep Leo home on the day of the clinic but was assured that wouldn’t be necessary: An assistant principal allegedly told him the boy couldn’t be vaccinated without the parent’s consent.

What happened next is both disturbing and strange.

According to court documents, on the day of the clinic an unidentified worker removed the child from class and applied a label with a different student’s initials and birthday to his shirt. The information was from a student that had already been vaccinated.

Leo protested, saying “Dad said no,” but clinic workers gave him a stuffed animal to distract him, told him he was “a brave little boy” and then administered one shot of the Prizer BioNTech vaccine.

When school officials realized the “error,” they called the parents to apologize. The parents promptly removed him from Academy School in Brattleboro and placed him in a private school. All this took place in late 2021.

The child has not suffered harm from the vaccine, according to court documents, but the parents sued for violation of their rights.

John Klar, an attorney for the Politellas, criticized the Vermont high court for “not even pay(ing) lip service to the constitutional liberties implicated, ruling against traditional protections of parental rights and informed consent.

“But the PREP Act is not above the Constitution’s supremacy clause; it’s the other way around,” he wrote in The Federalist.

Klar warned about other assaults on parental rights in the Green Mountain State, and said he believes the school intended to vaccinate the child all along. The school, which was eligible to receive state money based on vaccination rates, has been unable to explain “how such a gross error occurred,” he wrote.

“In Vermont, minor children may obtain transgender hormones and birth control without parental consent, and a 2024 law bars parents from seeing which library books are checked out by their children 12 years and older. Yet these are examples where the child wants something against his parents’ wishes.

“Congress never intended for the PREP Act to abolish fundamental medical ethics or the legal rights of patients and parents. The PREP Act does not shield public servants from accountability for actions that have nothing to do with vaccine safety or efficacy. The Politellas did not sue a vaccine manufacturer for a harmful product; they sued school officials who inflicted very real harm.”

Klar says school officials, and the state court, are hiding behind laws intended to protect Big Pharma from liability, not “incompetent government employees from accountability for their wrongs.”

The appeal was filed in November, and Klar is hopeful the nation’s highest court, which takes up only about 100-150 of the 7,000 cases it receives annually, will hear it because of its potential national significance.

“All American children are constitutionally entitled to the protections of informed parental consent,” he writes. “Should these abhorrent court decisions stand, ‘vaccine hesitancy’ may be joined by ‘public school hesitancy.’”

But for many, that hesitancy is already there.

Private schools and homeschooling have boomed in the wake of the COVID pandemic, as private schools reopened much sooner than public schools and were more responsive to parents who did not want to mask or vaccinate their children.

The pandemic also brought more attention to the far-left racial and sexual agenda being promoted in many public schools, leading more parents to make their exit. Nationally, around 2 million students have left traditional public schools over the last five years.

Photo credit: https://johnklar.substack.com/p/politella-petition-for-writ-of-certiorari