RALEIGH, North Carolina: North Carolina's highest court has ruled that a mother and her teenage son can pursue a lawsuit over a COVID-19 vaccine the boy allegedly received without consent at a school clinic — a case testing the limits of federal immunity protections during public health emergencies.

Late last week, the state Supreme Court reversed earlier rulings that blocked the family's legal claims under the federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, which shields organizations involved in pandemic countermeasures. The justices said the family's claims of constitutional rights violations could move forward.

According to the lawsuit, 14-year-old Tanner Smith went to a Guilford County high school clinic in August 2021 for COVID-19 testing after an outbreak on his football team. He told clinic staff he didn't want the vaccine and did not have a signed parental consent form. When attempts to contact his mother, Emily Happel, failed, a staff member allegedly told another worker to "give it to him anyway," the legal filing states.

Happel and Smith sued the Guilford County Board of Education and the Old North State Medical Society, which helped run the clinic, for battery and violations of constitutional rights.

A lower court and appeals panel previously ruled that the PREP Act barred the lawsuit, citing its broad liability protections during emergencies. However, Chief Justice Paul Newby, writing for the majority, said the law did not cover alleged violations of state constitutional rights, including a parent's right to make medical decisions for their child and an individual's right to refuse medical treatment.

"Because tort injuries are not constitutional violations, the PREP Act does not bar plaintiffs' constitutional claims," Newby wrote.

Five Republican justices backed the ruling, with two issuing a separate opinion suggesting the federal law's immunity protections could be narrowed even further.

The ruling sends the case back to trial court, where it could proceed on constitutional grounds.

In a dissent, Associate Justice Allison Riggs, joined by the court's other Democratic justice, argued the PREP Act should preempt state constitutional claims. She accused the majority of misinterpreting the federal law: "Through a series of dizzying inversions, it explicitly rewrites an unambiguous statute to exclude state constitutional claims from the broad and inclusive immunity."