A series of federal actions aimed at entering states, so that parents allow parents to abandon the mandates to school for religious or personal reasons, threaten to undermine iron California prohibitions on such exceptions.
California is one of the five states that prohibit any non -medical exceptions, which is the result of the iconic law of 2015, adopted after the outbreak of Disneyland Cores. Connecticut, New York, Maine and Western Virginia have similar laws.
The law is attributed to the fact that in the 2024-25 academic year, the indicators of California kindergartens were instilled, up to 96.1% to 96.1%, compared with 92.6% in 2014-15, even though the national rate decreased. California is one of 10 states With the level of vaccination of vaccination in kindergarten, which exceeds 95% threshold experts, is required to achieve the immunity of the herd.
If the vaccine mandates are weakened, “we will have more outbreaks, and schools will be less safe for families who have vulnerable children,” said Dr. Eric Ball, a pediatrician in the Okhinj district and chairman American Academy of Pediatrics CaliforniaField
Interact with ours Journalism financed by the Community When we delve into children's care, a transitional kindergarten, health and other issues affecting children from birth to 5 years.
Key actions that allow you to free from the vaccine include:
- The legislation introduced in Congress last month will maintain federal financing of education from the States without religious exceptions.
- A letter from the Ministry of Health and Social Services threatened to maintain federal financing of vaccines from the States that have a form of religious freedom or personal conscience laws, but do not allow vaccines excluding. The movement is “part Great efforts HHS to strengthen compliance with laws that protect conscience and religious exercises. ”
- Several trials make their way through the courts from parents, including in California, are looking for the right to religious liberation, which can ultimately be in the Supreme Court.
Legal experts say that, taken together, these steps show coordinated efforts to accelerate in such restrictions as California contributed to the ability of parents to send their nonaccitted children to school.
“We must assume that each aspect of the administration, at least three judges of the Supreme Court and a significant contingent in the Congress are actively trying to implement changes in the law that will deprive of cancellation … California’s approach so as not to resolve non-medical exceptions,” said Lindsay Wiley, professor of the Law in UCLA.
In Western Virginia, this approach is already successful. Despite the fact that the state’s legislative body recently rejected the bill that would first allow religious release, the republican governor Patrick Morrisi signed an order to permit, the support of HHS supported by him.
Vaccinations and syringes in the larchmont -pediatrics in Los -angles.
(All J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
“Vaccination is considered one of the greatest achievements of public healthcare, preventing the spread of serious diseases, reducing hospitalization and saving life,” the statement said. “CDP is still committed to ensuring that all Californians continue to have access to safe and effective vaccines, which are based on reliable, transparent and scientific data.”
Federal actions take place at the time of growing anti-vaccine ardor in the Trump administration. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy -Jr. for a long time was a frank critic of vaccines, including a vaccine to prevent measles. Being the HHS secretary, he defended the MRNA research, limited the Covid-19 pictures for the elderly and those who have existing diseases and promised to identify the relationship between vaccines and autism.
California's evolution on the mandates for vaccines
In 1961, California became one of the first states to allow residents to abandon vaccines for a wide range of personal beliefs, within the framework of the law obliging a vaccine against polio for visiting at school.
For decades, few parents argued that the release, and the level of children leaving the vaccines, for non -medical reasons, remained 0.5%, said Dr. Richard Pan, a former state senator, which is the author of the 2015 Law, excluding unofficial exceptions.
Pan said that the level of exceptions began to grow in the mid-2000s, when actress Jenny McCarthy appeared on a sip and claimed that the vaccines caused her son's autism. “But what really gave fuel,” is the appearance of Facebook and Twitter, said pan. “Social networks really connected people who are anti-Vax and created an echo-camera.”
By the 2013-14 academic year, 3.1% of California kindergartens received non -medical release of at least one necessary vaccine. The speed of kindergartens, completely vaccinated against measles, fell to 92.3% – significantly lower than 95% necessary for the immunity of the herd.
In 2014, the case in Disneyland spread to more than 140 people throughout the country, which, according to epidemiologists, was an epidemiologist Refushed by renunciation of the vaccineThe field at that moment of the crisis Pan introduced SB277, making California The first state is almost 35 years old Elimination of non -lawsian exceptions of the vaccine.
The legislation received the support of many parents, especially those whose children could not be vaccinated for medical reasons and relied on the immunity of others. “The whole goal 277 was actually protecting the rights and freedoms of families and their children in order to get an education that could not be vaccinated,” said pan.
Despite the bitter discussions, not a single major religious denominations opposed the bill, said pan.
“This is really not about religion,” said pan. “We are talking about an attempt to find a loophole or an excuse for someone, who does not want to vaccinate their child.”
Parents say the mandate of California violates religious beliefs
The contingent of parents says that their sincere religious beliefs prevent them from instilling their children.
In 2023, Amy and Steve Dosher from Placerville brought a federal lawsuit along with two other families against California, claiming that SB277 violated their right to freely exercise their religion, preventing them from sending their 16-year-old daughter to public school.
Discoers, who attend the church near their house, “widened and consulted with the Bible, when they decided to vaccinate their children, and they reached a firm religious belief that vaccinations violate their religion”, according to The complaint is filed as part of the trial.
Their daughter, who is enrolled in the program of an independent school school, cannot “typical interaction with children who receive“ normal ”children. This caused a large stigma. “
The lawsuit claims that her parents had to record her on gymnastics classes and spend $ 10,000 a year on independent expenses for study, “compensating for the shortcomings of socialization caused by SB277”.
While the lawsuit was rejected in June, he is now appealing to the 9th District Court of Appeal. Lawyers in a similar lawsuit in New York, presented by Amisha’s parents, requested a consideration of the Supreme Court.
“I think this is a total moment of change,” said Christina Hildebrand, president and founder of Voice for Selection, a lawyer who sponsored a California lawsuit.
“If vaccines are so effective and have no risk, then people should want to get them,” she said. “How good is the product really if you need to apply a mandate on them?”
Wiley from UCLA Law said that she sympathizes with a sincere religious object, and the herd can still be achieved, even if a small number of people refuse. The problem, according to her, is that the states are difficult for the police on reliability and “they can really open gateways to significantly reduce the level of vaccination.”
Dorit Reiss, a professor of law at the University of California at San Francisco, who is studying vaccines, said that religious exceptions are often “used as a fig list for people who have safety problems. The way the system works is that it gives the honor of good liars. ”
As part of her study, she found that “a whole industry of people trying to help each other, get liberation” on the Internet, including those who offer samples for parents and seminars on how to claim religious liberation for irreparable reasons.
Reiss points to Numerous studies The discovery of what is making exceptions wider and easier to get, has a tendency to lead to lower vaccination and more outbreaks.
Unstable landscape for mandates for vaccines
Since the pandemic Covid, the states throughout the country have experienced a decrease in the level of kindergartens, which are completely vaccinated, and an increase in the number of parents looking for exceptions in accordance with Recent KFF report, Non -profit research group.
Last week, the Florida General Surgeon announced that the state would no longer require children to vaccinate in order to attend public school, which all 50 states require.
Threats are also growing from Washington, the District of Colombia The law on grace, Which was presented in the Congress last month as a member of the House of Greg Steub (R-FL), will maintain federal education funding from any state that does not give parents the right to abandon vaccines for religious reasons.
The bill, if ultimately established and signed by President Trump, will also clearly not interfere with the States, including California, to demand from the parents of some documents to prove sincere religious condemnation against vaccines.
“Freedom of speech and religion is the most sacred right, guaranteed in accordance with our constitution,” said The Times, a member of the House of Representatives of Steub in his statement. “Not a single student or their family should never be forced to sacrifice their faith or jump through loopholes in order to meet the requirements of the vaccine.”
Last week, Kennedy weighed this question. In a letter, he said that if the state already has laws on books that protect religious freedom or personal conscience in any form, these laws should apply to the rejection of the vaccine. If the states with such laws do not comply with the directive, they may lose financing of the federal vaccine program for children that finances vaccines for low -income children.
In California there is no religious freedom or statues of personal conscience. But 29 other states adopted religious laws on freedom, and 18 have laws on parental rights, Which, according to the federal government, can use legal experts to force the states to offer a refusal of the vaccine.
“States have the right to balance the goals of public health care with individual freedom, and in honor of these decisions it lights trust,” writes Kennedy. “Protection of both public health and personal freedom is how we restore faith in our institutions and again make America healthy.”
Several legal experts said that the approach was alarming.
“I am very concerned that this is part of the play where they go at the state level and the federal level to push these laws,” said Richard Hughes, Epstein’s lawyer Bekker Green in Washington, the County of Colombia, who for two decades worked on the vaccine law. “This is a mass federal conversion, and this is incredibly inappropriate.”
This article is part of the initiative of “early children's education”, dedicated to the training and development of California children from birth to 5 years. To obtain additional information about this initiative and its charity sponsors, go to Latimes.com/EarlyedField
