University of Washington requirement that students have an X-ray examination before registration to discover possible tuberculosis infections overrode religious objections thereto
How later courts described this case
- University of Washington requirement that students have an X-ray examination before registration to discover possible tuberculosis infections overrode religious objections thereto
- neither First Amendment nor prior version of article I, section 11 barred mandatory tuberculosis testing as condition of admission to University of Washington; "the public interest [served] is the health of all of the students and employees of the university[;] ... [t]he danger to this interest is clear and present, grave and immediate[, and] ... [i]nfringement of appellant's rights is a necessary consequence of a practical attempt to avoid the danger"
- university board of regents may refuse admission to student who refuses to get a chest x-ray to rule out tuberculosis, even without a regulation, under its implied authority
- university board of regents may refuse admission to student who refuses to get a chest x-ray to rule out *728 tuberculosis, even without a regulation, under its implied authority
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Finley, J.
(dissenting) — Very few cases involving claimed violations of constitutional religious liberties or rights can be examined with the mathematical exactness accorded the present appeal by the dissenting opinion. The coldly impersonal, unemotional, mathematical calculation there suggested, reducing the problem evil or menace to student health to a mathematical formula or relationship, is quite persuasive. Using (1) the University of Washington health officers’ statistics respecting the incidence of tuberculosis in the student population of the university for approximately a decade; and (2) an assumed figure or number representing students who might claim exemption from X-ray examination because of their adherence to the Christian Science religion (and the assumed figure appears reasonable to me, certainly in the absence of more definite information in the record); thereupon, the alleged evil or menace to student health appears to fall short of the “clear - and-present-danger” standard. As stated in the dissent, if the present incidence of tuberculosis continues on the campus, X-ray examinations of all of the assumed number of students who are Christian Scientists might uncover one active case of tuberculosis every seven and one-third years. For the foregoing and other reasons discussed by Judge Hamley, I concur in his dissenting opinion.
February 27, 1952. Petition for rehearing denied.