Because of religion, a West Virginia judge just torched the state's best public health policy

A wave of religious exemptions have turned a once model vaccine mandate system for public schools into a ticking time bomb

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In a wildly irresponsible move, a circuit judge in West Virginia ruled that religious excuses are now acceptable when it comes to avoiding childhood vaccinations as a prerequisite to enter public schools. This ruling doesn’t just tweak state policy. It overturns a long-standing vaccine mandate and opens the door for preventable disease outbreaks.

(Image via Shutterstock)

West Virginia, despite being a deeply red state, had one of the most laudable vaccine policies in the country until recently. State law requires children to have all their shots if they want to enter public school, unless there’s a medical reason for them to avoid getting vaccinated.

So even though the state has some of the highest diabetes and heart disease rates in the country, and even though childhood vaccination rates are very low (56.6%), it leads the nation when it comes to school-age vaccination rates. In other words, a lot of babies go unvaccinated. But parents are aware their kids need to get vaccinated to enter a public school, so they eventually get those shots.

That’s the power of good public health policy. Until recently, that policy enjoyed support from both medical experts and at least some right-wing political leaders. Too bad we don’t live in that world anymore.

When Republican lawmakers tried to loosen that mandate in 2024, former Gov. Jim Justice vetoed the bill because obviously that would be irresponsible.

“West Virginia historically has seen very few instances of these diseases, specifically because the vaccination requirements in this state are so strong,” he said. “Importantly, the vaccines at issue have been required in this state for decades and have kept our communities safe.”

Don’t give him too much credit, though. Justice signed into law the “Equal Protection for Religion Act” in 2023, laying the groundwork for exactly the kind of religious exemptions he claimed to oppose.

Now a judge has cited that very act to make it more dangerous to live in West Virginia.

It comes after the current Republican governor and anti-vaccine enthusiast, Patrick Morrisey, issued an executive order in January demanding that state health authorities issue religious exemptions to the vaccine mandate. However, because state law still required vaccinations absent a medical excuse, the West Virginia Board of Education instructed districts to reject those exemptions.

570 requests for religious exemptions were suddenly in limbo. All of them had been approved by the state but rejected by school districts. That’s what led Miranda Guzman to file her lawsuit. Her child was removed from public school despite her requesting and receiving a religious vaccine exemption from the state. (Other parents with similar stories were also part of the lawsuit.)

Guzman, a Christian, claimed that vaccinating her child “would demonstrate a lack of faith in God” and “disobey the Holy Spirit’s leading.” It didn’t matter that she was lying to herself about all of that because faith-based bullshit is now given a free pass in our legal system.

Circuit Judge Michael Froble bought it hook, line, and sinker.

He said last week that the statewide policy forbidding religious exemptions for vaccine mandates was illegal under the “Equal Protection for Religion Act.” (He said as much in a preliminary injunction on October, but the more recent ruling expands its scope to families beyond the original plaintiffs.)

In his ruling Wednesday, Froble wrote that the families’ religious beliefs and practices regarding vaccination have been “substantially burdened” by the school board’s policy not to allow them to attend school.

(You know who will be substantially burdened by unvaccinated kids attending school? Literally everybody else.)

Froble said that it would be fine for those 570 unvaccinated students to attend public school because they represented “less than 1% of the statewide student population” and therefore “would not jeopardize herd immunity.”

But herd immunity isn’t static; it collapses quickly once exemptions become widely available and socially normalized. With the new ruling in place, you can bet a lot more religious parents will request an exemption now that they know they can receive one and it will be accepted. That means herd immunity could indeed be jeopardized.

Congratulations, West Virginia. Your kids are in danger because conservatives love measles and polio more than healthy children.

The State Board of Education plans to appeal the decision. But for now, they’ve suspended their policy rejecting religious vaccines exemptions.

Naturally, the current Republican governor and anti-vaccine enthusiast, Patrick Morrisey, celebrated the awful decision.

“Today’s ruling is a win for every family forced from school over their faith,” Morrisey said in the statement. “I will always take a stand for religious liberty and for the children of this state. I applaud the court for upholding West Virginia’s Equal Protection for Religion Act.”

You will never love anything as much as Republicans love communicable diseases.

The irony here is that the “Equal Protection for Religion Act” says the law can’t force anyone to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs unless the government has a compelling reason otherwise. Preventing deadly outbreaks should be the textbook definition of a “compelling” reason!

Vaccines only work if the vast majority of people get the shots. In the case of measles, if 95% of the population is protected, the disease won’t be able to spread due to herd immunity. That’s why medical exemptions are permitted; it’s okay if a handful of kids are physically unable to take the shots assuming everyone else can and will get them.

Allowing people to simply refuse to have their kids vaccinated because they don’t feel like it puts entire communities at risk. West Virginia had a sensible policy before despite Republicans constantly working to tear it down. Now a judge has done their dirty work for them.

These selfish parents would rather jeopardize public safety in the name of religion, and unfortunately, that argument has been effective in front of conservative judges.

Part of the problem is a profound (sometimes deliberate) misunderstanding of how exemptions actually function in public health. Medical exemptions are not “secular” in any meaningful way. If the state allowed conscientious objections to vaccines, then the religious side might have a point. But implying that the state can accommodate students who are unvaccinated without noting that the math and science don’t work if additional accommodations are permitted shows you the sort of people we’re dealing with.

It’s unfortunate that vaccine deniers and their conservative religious allies don’t give a damn about anyone’s health. They choose to believe conspiracy theories about vaccines instead of understanding the science behind how they work. And now, with legal backing, their misinformation has real and dangerous consequences. More children in West Virginia could be at risk all because of these religious extremists and their right-wing enablers.

This isn’t just about one lawsuit or one judge, though. It’s not even about a giant batch of religious exemptions. It’s about the deliberate sabotage of one of the strongest, most effective public health safeguards in the country, an achievement that once represented a rare point of bipartisan sanity. West Virginia’s vaccine policy used to send a message that children’s health was more important than conspiracy theories. That promise has now been shredded in the name of political pandering and manufactured religious outrage.

We can’t lay the blame on one judge when the state’s current governor and plenty of Republican officials actively fought for this outcome. They rooted for the erosion of public health protections and pretended that religious liberty outweighs the basic right of children to attend school without being exposed to preventable diseases.

The consequences could be deadly. Some parents will rightly be terrified to send their immunocompromised kids to school. Some districts will have to scramble in response to outbreaks that used to be theoretical. Some families will have to choose between their jobs and their children’s health when their classrooms become unsafe.

None of this had to happen. The state had decades of proof that strong vaccine requirements kept communities safe. But because a majority of West Virginia voters prefer ignorance over expertise, they no longer have a government willing to defend public health against irrational religious voices.

Unless this ruling is overturned, West Virginia will go from being a model of responsible health policy to a cautionary tale that public health officials cite when explaining how outbreaks happen.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

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