Mandatory Vaccinations, Religious Freedom, and Discrimination

Abstract This article responds to the prevailing normative and doctrinal uncertainty over the compatibility of mandatory vaccination schemes with the right to freedom of religion or belief and the prohibition of discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief under the ECHR. The article develops an analytical framework that engages with the purpose of religious freedom and religious anti-discrimination; the scope of public health as a legitimate aim for state interference with those rights; the procedural fairness of mandatory vaccination schemes; and the empirical evidence underpinning those schemes. This multiprong analysis has important implications for any form of wide-ranging state restrictions on religious freedom and religious anti-discrimination, for reasons of public health, and more broadly.