One State Jumps Into the Fray Over Vaccine Exemptions

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — One state’s effort to exempt young school-aged children from vaccines appears to have stalled as states contend with a burgeoning measles outbreak. In January, West Virginia Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey issued an executive order allowing families to apply for religious exemptions to mandated childhood vaccinations. A measure that would have enshrined that order into law sailed through the state Senate last month, but on Monday the state House of Delegates rejected a bill that would have dismantled what is broadly considered by medical experts to be among the most protective school immunization policies in the country.

West Virginia is currently one of a tiny minority of U.S. states that only exempts students from being vaccinated if doing so poses a medical problem for them.

The bill rejected Monday proposed allowing private and religious schools to decide whether or not to accept religious exemptions from students’ families, whereas the Senate version of the bill would have required the schools to accept religious exemptions. Public schools would have been required to accept the exemptions under both versions.

The state Senate also voted in favor allowing families to opt out of vaccination for philosophical reasons, a justification the House measure didn’t include. West Virginia’s vaccine battle is surging to the forefront of state legislative issues as measles outbreaks in West Texas and New Mexico have surpassed a combined 350 cases, and at least two unvaccinated people have died from measles-related causes.

The West Virginia bill rejected by lawmakers Monday also would have changed the process for families seeking medical exemptions by allowing a child’s health care provider to submit testimony to a school that certain vaccines “are or may be detrimental to the child’s health or are not appropriate.”

Opposition Forces Surge

Those who opposed broadening West Virginia’s narrow vaccine exemptions said they were concerned about public health effects. Republican Delegate Keith Marple of Harrison County, 81, said he’s witnessed people disabled by polio and living on iron lungs.

Marple said he doesn’t want to see West Virginia children hurt and said it’s “essential” they continue receiving the required immunizations.

“I don’t want that on my conscience,” he said, before voting no on the bill.

West Virginia does not currently have a state health officer, but the last three people to hold the position wrote a joint letter to lawmakers Friday asking them to vote “no” on the bill, which was rejected 56 to 42 on the House floor.

Morrisey’s communications director Alex Lanfranconi said debate had “sadly derailed” since Morrisey put forward his proposal to provide a religious exemption to “unworkable, rigorous mandates.”

“West Virginia remains an outlier by failing to provide these exemptions, aligning with liberal states like California and New York,” he said in a statement.

State Praised for Vaccine Policy

A recent U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report on kindergarten vaccination exemptions cited the West Virginia as having the lowest exemption rate in the country, and the best vaccination rates for kids that age.

State law requires children to receive vaccines for chickenpox, hepatitis B, measles, meningitis, mumps, diphtheria, polio, rubella, tetanus and whooping cough before starting school. The state does not require COVID-19 vaccinations.

Last year, former governor and current U.S. Sen. Republican Jim Justice vetoed a less sweeping vaccination bill passed by the Republican supermajority Legislature that would have exempted private school and some nontraditional public school students from vaccination requirements.

At the time, Justice said he had to defer to the licensed medical professionals who “overwhelmingly” spoke out in opposition to the legislation.

Religious Freedom

Morrisey, who previously served as West Virginia’s attorney general, said he believes religious exemptions for vaccinations should already be permitted in West Virginia under a 2023 state law called the Equal Protection for Religion Act.

The law stipulates that the government can’t “substantially burden” someone’s constitutional right to freedom of religion unless it can prove there is a “compelling interest” to restrict that right.

Morrisey said that law hasn’t “been fully and properly enforced” since it passed. He urged the Legislature to help him codify the religious vaccination exemptions into law.

After the bill failed Monday, Democratic Delegate Mike Pushkin called on lawmakers to reach out to Morrisey and “ask him to rescind his dangerous executive order on childhood immunizations.”

U.S. kindergarten vaccination rates dipped in 2023 and the proportion of children with exemptions rose to an all-time high, according to federal data posted in October.