A FACEBOOK POST which claims that the US Supreme Court has ruled that Covid-19 shots are not traditional vaccines is inaccurate.

The post appeared on Facebook earlier this month, and is one of many similar posts that have been circulating across social media channels for years.

Headed ‘SHOCKING HISTORIC DECISION’, the post states that the US Supreme Court ruled that vaccines for Covid-19 are not vaccines, but that they are “gene therapies” instead.

It states that the court made this ruling as a result of a lawsuit taken by current US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy (who is a renowned anti-vaccine campaigner), and that the decision was reached as a result of international cooperation between lawyers and scientists.

The post discusses genetic engineering and the Nuremberg Code – a set of ethical principles about human experimentation developed after World War II – which are frequently referenced by conspiracy theorists who have opposed Covid vaccines. 

The claims made in the post about the US Supreme Court ruling are false, and are part of a pattern of similar posts over the years that take aim at the Covid-19 vaccine and vaccination more widely.

False claims

Similar claims have been debunked by fact-checkers here and here in the past. A search of recent Supreme Court rulings for 2025 and 2024 on the court’s website turns up no rulings mentioning Covid-19 vaccines in this context.

Robert F Kennedy Jr has a history of vaccine skepticism and has reportedly filed numerous lawsuits against vaccines and public health mandates since 2020, via the organisation Children’s Health Defense, an organisation he founded and used to lead.

However, no posts or press releases on the CHD or US Department of Health and Human Services websites contain any mention of a statement he released about the alleged Supreme Court ruling.

Kennedy himself also debunked similar claims in the past. In 2021, he told Associated Press that the quote is false.

“Clearly somebody made it up and is promoting it because the same quote keeps coming back no matter how many times I deny it,” he said.

It is clear from the above evidence therefore that no such Supreme Court ruling was given in relation to Covid-19 vaccines, and no statement confirming this released by RFK Jr. 

Like traditional vaccines, Covid-19 vaccines allow a person’s immune system to become immune to the virus by creating certain proteins called antibodies.

They do this by training a person’s immune system to recognise the disease without making a person suffer from the disease itself.

Some of the Covid-19 vaccines, particularly those by Pfizer and Moderna, relied on new technology that teaches cells how to produce a piece of viral protein so it could fight the disease.

They differed from more traditional vaccines, which have instead tended to use weakened versions of viruses that allow a person’s body to recognise them.

The result of both vaccines is the same – and ultimately, no ruling has been made that states they are different. 

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