A Northern Kentucky high school basketball player has filed suit against the Northern Kentucky Health Department (NKHD) after he was barred from school and basketball competition for three weeks during a chicken pox outbreak at his school.
As reported by the Associated Press and a number of other outlets, Our Lady of Assumption Academy (Walton, Ky.) basketball player Jerome Kunkle has filed suit against the NKHD for his claim they are violating his first amendment rights by barring him from school and school activities (including basketball games) because he has not been inoculated for chicken pox.
The ban was sparked by an outbreak of chicken pox throughout the Our Lady of Assumption student body. Per Yahoo News, some 32 students at Our Lady have already contracted chickenpox, inspiring the NKHD to take more drastic measures: a mandatory three-week break before any student without a vaccine or immunity to the chicken pox could return to school or extracurricular activities.
As for Kunkle’s future, he continues to claim that he should be allowed to continue playing without a vaccine, because he and his father believe vaccines run contrary to their religious beliefs. That logic is derived from the belief that if a medicine is made in part by using stem cell lines it is immoral to use. There’s just one problem with that logic: according to the National Catholic Bioethics Center, the vaccine for chicken pox does not contain any “aborted” cells, meaning Catholics like Kunkle should have very little to be concerned about.
