Governor Patrick Morrisey continues to double down on his opposition to the West Virginia state law requiring all children entering school for the first time to show proof of immunization.  This week, Morrisey endorsed a lawsuit filed by a Raleigh County mother challenging the law.

At a stop in Beckley Tuesday, Morrisey stood behind a podium with a “Protecting Religious Liberty” sign, and he said, “This is about our core religious liberties, and once you start giving that up that’s a pretty significant issue for our state and our country.”

Morrisey has been on the losing end of this fight for months. The Republican dominated House of Delegates defeated a bill (42-56) that would have allowed for religious and philosophical exemptions to the vaccine. Then the state Board of Education voted to direct Superintendent Michele Blatt to give guidance to county schools to follow the existing law that allows for only medical exemptions, thus ignoring Morrisey’s executive order from January allowing parents to opt out of their children’s immunizations on “religious or conscientious grounds.”

You would think Morrisey would have gotten the message.  So, why is he continuing his very public fight?  The answer lies in politics, not policy.

Polls consistently show the public favors immunization. For example, an Annenberg Poll in May found that 87 percent of Americans say the benefit of childhood measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccination outweigh any potential risks.

However, a vast majority of Americans (84 percent, according to a poll by the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs) say religious freedom is extremely or very important to them. And that is how Morrisey is framing the issue.

That approach is consistent with his actions as state Attorney General.  He took on issues that he knew would resonate with the Republican base and framed them as his fight for West Virginia values and against the “woke agenda.”

Imagine a political ad if/when Morrisey runs for re-election or mounts a US Senate campaign.  It might sound something like this: “When I was Attorney General, I fought against Obama’s EPA and won, and while Governor, I fought unelected bureaucrats who wanted to take away your religious freedom.”

Most voters will not have the time or inclination to look deeper and learn that the “religious freedom” argument was really about the effort to roll back the protection of our children against debilitating diseases.

The lawsuit Morrisey is backing was filed by a Raleigh County mother who is trying to enroll her 4-year-old daughter in school. Miranda Guzman’s lawsuit states that she is not opposed to medication when an intervention is necessary, but she “sincerely believes that God designed her child’s immune system with special care and with the well-designed ability to counteract disease (even though it is not fail-proof), and to preemptively alter that immune system would demonstrate a lack of faith in God.”

One could reasonably counter that God has guided the hands and minds of scientists and doctors who have developed and implemented life-saving vaccines, but we can save that argument for another day. The courts can sort that out.

Governor Morrisey has learned through his successful campaigns for Attorney General and now for Governor what works for him. His opposition to mandatory immunizations—framed as a fight for religious freedom—is another in his series of political calculations.