Will that make them liable for adverse reactions?
US courts have not had jurisdiction over civil cases for vaccine injuries since the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. Congress passed that law because nuisance lawsuits from anti-vaccine activists threatened the nation’s vaccine manufacturers with bankruptcy and Congress didn’t want to see things like polio start paralyzing children again.
Claims for vaccine injuries go through the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, also known as the vaccine court. They require no medical proof that a vaccine actually caused a particular injury; merely a plausible theory for how it could have done so. Average payout is 6-figures. And with that very low bar for winning and high payout number, they pay an average of 1 claim per 1 million vaccinations.
While the COVID-19 vaccines are authorized under EUA (rather than full FDA approval), they’re actually covered under the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), which was established in a law signed in 2005 by President George W. Bush. Same basic premise, but it covers a wider variety of medical countermeasures and treatments for various threats.