The court dismisses a lawsuit filed by the family of a university student who died after being required to receive a COVID vaccination.

A federal court on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) brought by the family of a 24-year-old university student who died of complications from COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the lawsuit and ruled that the federal government enjoys sovereign immunity, which protects it from lawsuits.
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) funded the case, which was filed in May 2023 by the estate of George Watts Jr.
Watts’ family sued the DOD and Lloyd Austin III in his official capacity as Secretary of Defense. The DOD oversaw the development and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines under Operation Warp Speed.
The lawsuit alleged that the DOD was involved in “willful misconduct” by continuing to distribute only the stockpiled version of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine that had received emergency use authorization (EUA), even after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted full approval of another Pfizer vaccine, Comirnaty.
According to the lawsuit, the DOD “capitalized on a classic ‘bait and switch’ fraud,” by using the fact that Comirnaty was FDA-approved to bolster its claims that the Pfizer-BioNTech EUA vaccine was “safe and effective,” thereby misleading the American public in the process.
In November 2021, a federal judge rejected a DOD claim that the Pfizer-BioNTech EUA vaccine and the fully approved Comirnaty vaccine were “interchangeable.”
COVID-19 vaccines are classified as a “covered countermeasure” under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act). The law grants immunity to vaccine manufacturers and those who administer the vaccines against injury claims during a public health emergency.
The only exception to the PREP Act’s immunity shield is if a countermeasure-related injury is caused by “willful misconduct” by a person or entity otherwise protected under the law.
But Tuesday’s ruling bypassed the PREP Act’s provisions entirely. According to the judgment, the PREP Act does not abrogate the government’s or federal agencies’ sovereign immunity, but “expressly preserves it.”
“The government asserts its general immunity from suit, which, independently of the PREP Act, ‘reserves actions for money damages against officials in their official capacity absent a specific waiver by the government,’” the judgment states.
CHD CEO Mary Holland said the ruling “shows us how broken our legal system is today” and underscores “the urgent need for the Supreme Court to declare the PREP Act unconstitutional, which is unlikely, or for Congress to repeal it.”
Holland said:
“The PREP Act of 2005 — which fundamentally does not allow any compensation for injuries or deaths resulting from the use or misuse of experimental medical products — violates the most basic understanding of due process and the right to remedy a wrong.
“George Watts Jr. died because of a dangerous, mislabeled injection that he was misled into taking based on the false information that the product was ‘safe and effective’ and licensed. It was neither of those things.”
Kim Mack Rosenberg, CHD’s general counsel, also criticized the ruling. “The court took over a year to issue its decision and then issued a short decision that relied exclusively on sovereign immunity to dismiss the case and protect the government.” She said the court failed to “take a deep dive into the doctrine and the exceptions.”
Mack Rosenberg said the court “essentially told the family that they have no options for relief against the government despite the detailed allegations of willful misconduct in the complaint — all supported by substantial evidence.”
Ray Flores, senior outside counsel for CHD, represented Watts’ family in the lawsuit. “The PREP Act specifically gives exclusive jurisdiction to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia,” Flores said. Yet “the DC District Court ruled that it lacked jurisdiction.”
Attorney Michael Baum told The Defender that there is a severability provision in the PREP Act that was not addressed in the ruling.
“In my opinion, once the PREP Act designated the United States as a covered person and cut off all other remedies in all other courts, any claim of sovereign immunity should have been invalidated,” Baum said.
“The PREP Act clearly provides that unconstitutional provisions, such as cutting off all due process, can be severed,” he added. “The court could not see it that way.”
In the summer of 2021, SUNY Corning Community College in Corning, New York, where Watts was a student, mandated the COVID-19 vaccine for all students.
Watts, who was not yet vaccinated, waited for the FDA to grant full approval to a COVID-19 vaccine. He received his first dose of the vaccine at Guthrie Robert Packer Hospital in Pennsylvania on August 27, 2021 — four days after the FDA approved Pfizer’s Comirnaty vaccine.
The vaccine Watts received, however, was not Comirnaty, but the EUA Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, because the DOD did not make Comirnaty available.
Watts experienced side effects from the first dose. But because the vaccine was promoted as “safe and effective,” he received his second dose at the same location on September 17, 2021, according to the family’s lawsuit.
After his second dose, Watts experienced increasingly severe side effects, leading him to visit an emergency room on October 12, 2021, complaining of a lump on the left side of his neck and other ailments.
The hospital diagnosed him with sinusitis and prescribed an antibiotic. But Watts’ health continued to decline, and on October 27, 2021, he began coughing up blood at home before becoming unresponsive. He was found to have suffered cardiac arrest and subsequently died.
Watts had no prior medical history that could explain his sudden death. He also tested negative for COVID-19 in an autopsy test.
The medical examiner and an independent physician determined that Watts’ death was caused by “complications of COVID-19 vaccine-related myocarditis.” His death certificate listed COVID-19 vaccine-related myocarditis as the sole immediate cause of death.
Lucia Sinatra, co-founder of No College Mandates, said that Watts’ death “was the first time we found evidence that a university student’s death was the direct result of COVID-19 vaccines,” which led the organization to reach out to CHD to help the family file a lawsuit.
According to the family’s complaint, the DOD, in engaging in a “substantial ‘bait and switch’ fraud,” was aware that drugs assigned EUA status cannot legally be marketed as “safe and effective.” Under the FDA’s standard for EUA drugs, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine could only be marketed as “may be effective.”
Watts was misled into taking the vaccine, and he died as a result, the lawsuit claims.
“According to the filings, the DOD routinely equated experimental vaccines with licensed vaccines, directed the distribution, and left the experimental vaccine that killed George Watts Jr. as the only one available even after licensing,” Baum said. “This continued lack of concern for the critical distinction between licensed and experimental formed the basis for the alleged willful misconduct.”
According to Sinatra, the U.S. government, “in complete disregard of the risks and of what is acceptable under the law, deliberately misrepresented an experimental vaccine as ‘safe and effective.’”
By dismissing the claim, Sinatra said, “the court never addressed the claim of ‘willful misconduct,’ which is the core of the entire complaint. For this reason, the decision is devastating.”
Before suing the DOJ, the Watts family filed a request for benefits with the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP) in August 2022.
Watts’ family, however, received no decision from the CICP within the 240-day period in which the CICP is supposed to respond to claims, which led them to file their lawsuit.
As of August 1, the CICP, which offers compensation for serious injuries or deaths resulting from countermeasures implemented during a public health emergency, had approved 14 COVID-19 vaccine injury claims — out of a total of 13,356 claims filed. The CICP rejected 3,073 claims, while 10,226 claims were “under review” or “pending review.”
Baum said he would recommend that the Watts family appeal Tuesday’s decision.
Flores said he is “confident that a higher court on appeal will see that the ‘covered person’ status that the United States enjoys under the PREP Act both protects and subjects, and therefore waives sovereign immunity.”