SUPPORTING BILL – State Senate Health and Human Resources Committee Chairwoman Laura Wakim Chapman holds up a map on the state Senate floor Friday showing the five states – including West Virginia – that do not allow religious or philosophical exemptions for mandatory school-age immunization programs. -- Contributed

CHARLESTON — After a three-day delay, the West Virginia Senate approved Friday a bill to allow parents and guardians to cite religious or philosophical concerns to get out of the state’s mandatory immunization requirements for school-age children, but not without bipartisan opposition.

Senate Bill 460, relating to vaccine requirements, passed the Senate Friday morning in a 20-12 vote with two senators absent. The bill now crosses the hall to the House of Delegates for review.

SB 460, introduced on behalf of Gov. Patrick Morrisey, would allow parents and guardians to object to the requirements of the state’s program for compulsory immunization of public and private school children by citing a religious or philosophical belief.

“I want to make it clear no one is taking away anybody’s vaccines,” said Senate Health and Human Resources Committee Chairwoman Laura Wakim Chapman. “I think vaccines are safe, they do prevent disease and I encourage everybody to get vaccinated unless somebody has a religious or philosophical issue to it. Simple as that … I know of no person in this body who is anti-vaccination, but there are real harms being done by our law as currently written and this bill is done to fix those harms.”

Morrisey signed an executive order in January ordering the Bureau of Public Health and the state health officer to establish a process for religious and philosophical exemptions to school-age vaccines, citing the Equal Protection for Religion Act approved by the Legislature in 2023.

SB 460 would officially codify Morrisey’s executive order. The bill, as amended by the Senate Health and Human Resources Committee, would allow the parent or guardian to present a written statement to the administrator of the child’s school or operator of a state-regulated child care center that the mandatory vaccination requirements cannot be met because it conflicts with the religious or philosophical beliefs of the parent, legal guardian or emancipated child.

The Senate’s two lone Democratic members joined with 10 Republican members to oppose SB 460, citing the state’s strong school-age vaccination rates for keeping the spread of communicable diseases low. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, West Virginia’s MMR vaccine coverage rate for the 2023-2024 school year was 98.3 percent, slightly above the healthy people target of 95 percent. That’s up from 95.6 percent during the 2022-2023 school year, and above West Virginia’s MMR coverage rate during the 2019-2020 school year of 98.2 percent.

“The public safety, the public health and the eradication of disease is certainly a compelling state interest,” said state Sen. Joey Garcia, D-Marion. “I think the constituents that have reached out to me fear that this is going to cause a strain on our health system, a strain on our families, and again possibly the worst of the worst: The death of somebody who is vulnerable, who’s immunocompromised, and who otherwise needs the support.”

“I believe in childhood immunizations; I believe they work for the vast majority of people,” said state Sen. Robbie Morris, R-Randolph. “The philosophical exemption is a problem with this bill. If we go down the route of allowing people to opt out of public health and public safety requirements because they don’t like them, I feel that is a slippery slope.”

The committee substitute for SB 460 would prohibit parochial and religious schools from setting their own immunization requirements, requiring these schools to accommodate the religious and philosophical exemptions cited by parents and guardians.

Several senators on both sides of the political aisle raised concerns with this provision following a statement Wednesday from the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston stating it would defend its constitutional rights to continuing mandating immunizations in its schools.

“Religious liberty for me, but not for thee,” said state Sen. Ryan Weld, R-Brooke. “What this bill does … is that it uses the power of the state — the power of government — to dictate to a church how it can operate itself. A church can no longer say we operate the school and we’re going to do so in a manner that we see fit. This uses the power of the state to dictate to a church.”

“We know there’s going to be a lawsuit over this bill,” said Senate Minority Leader Mike Woelfel, R-Cabell. “We know that, among other parties, the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston has signaled through its press release that it will go to court to protect its religious freedom, its right of religious expression and its right to control the enrollment and administration of its schools.”

The bill allows children to continue to participate in extracurricular activities and it allows for civil suits against schools that discriminate against these students due to not being vaccinated. State Sen. Mike Oliverio, R-Monongalia, asked whether the civil suit provision could mean a religious school could be compelled to admit an unvaccinated student against the school’s religious beliefs.

“If a Catholic school … were to have a family show up for school and they indicate that they’re going to avail themselves of the state law for a philosophical or religious exemption, are you saying that the school would be required to admit those children?” Oliverio asked Woelfel.

“Yes … the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston would be compelled to take unvaccinated students under this,” Woelfel said.

State law requires children attending school in West Virginia to show proof of immunization for diphtheria; pertussis; tetanus; polio; measles, mumps, rubella; varicella; and hepatitis B unless proof of a medical exemption can be shown. West Virginia only provides for a narrow medical exemption to immunizations. Some form of mandatory immunization law has been on West Virginia’s books for 88 years.

State Sen. Tom Takubo, R-Kanawha, is a pulmonologist and an executive with WVU Medicine. The vote on SB 460 was postponed until Friday at the request of Takubo, who was at a conference on the opioid crisis in Florida for most of the week. Takubo said a petition was submitted to the Senate by more than 6,500 parents opposing SB 460. He also cited dozens of state medical, health care and education associations that oppose the bill.

“There are few things we can’t fix in the Legislature …o ne good thing about that is we always have the ability to come back. We can pretty much fix anything that we mess up on. You can’t bring back a child … You will never take that pain away from a parent who has lost a kid from a preventable childhood disease that we haven’t seen here in many, many decades.”

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 30 states offer a religious exemption to mandatory immunization requirements, while 13 states offer a religious and philosophical exemption. And two states — Louisiana and Minnesota — do not specify whether a non-medical immunization exemption needs to be for religious or personal reasons.

“We’re kind of in the middle there sticking out like a sore thumb,” Chapman said, holding up a map showing the five states with no religious or philosophical exemptions. “This law is not something crazy that anti-vaxxers want. This is bringing us up with 45 other states that realize that religious beliefs need to be respected and … it’s safe and effective for public health to allow these children to have a religious or philosophical exemption.”