In In the Interest of C.C., (GA Sup. Ct., Aug. 23, 2022), the Georgia Supreme Court gave guidance to a Juvenile Court on how to determine whether parents' objections to vaccinating their children (who were now in custody of the state) are based on a sincerely held religious belief. The court said in part:
Even if the Chandlers do not “observe a particular religion” or attend church consistently, and even if their objection to vaccination is partly secular, they may still be able to identify a religious belief that they sincerely hold and that would be violated by the vaccination of their children.... The juvenile court’s sincerity finding apparently rested at least in part on an assumption to the contrary; this prevents us from affirming this ruling....
In fairness to the juvenile court, the proper standard is not easily reducible to a simple formula; accordingly, we offer the following guidance.... Ultimately, the juvenile court must determine whether the Chandlers’ religious objection to the vaccination of their children is “truly held.” ... The court should “sh[y] away from attempting to gauge how central a sincerely held belief is to the believer’s religion.” And it must bear in mind that “a belief can be both secular and religious. The categories are not mutually exclusive.”...
The juvenile court can weigh various factors, including ... how long the Chandlers have asserted their professed religious belief, how much they know about it, and their reliance on “religious literature and teachings supporting the belief[.]” ... Whether the Chandlers have wavered in their actions related to vaccination “also appears to be relevant[.]”... But the juvenile court should also be cautious in affording more than a little weight to evidence that the Chandlers were inconsistent in visibly living out their religious beliefs; for example, the frequency of the family’s church attendance....
