West Virginia senators voted to dismantle one of the nation’s strictest school vaccination policies Friday by greenlighting an exemption for families who say mandated inoculations conflict with their religious or philosophical beliefs.

If approved by the House, the bill is expected to be signed into law by Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey, who has made allowing religious exemptions to vaccines a priority of his administration.

West Virginia is currently one of only a tiny minority of U.S. states that only allows medical exemptions for vaccinations. The state’s policy has long been heralded by medical experts as among the most protective in the country for kids.

The bill’s supporters say not allowing for exemptions is unconstitutional and interferes with children’s right to an education.

“Education is a fundamental right,” bill supporter Republican Sen. Laura Wakim Chapman of Ohio County said on the Senate floor. “We have no business trampling on a child’s religious beliefs for a fundamental right to have an education.”

Wakim Chapman, the Senate’s Health and Human Resources Chair, held up a poster board depicting the five states including West Virginia that currently do not allow for religious or philosophical exemptions vaccination exemptions.

“This law is not something crazy that anti-vaxxers want,” she said, adding that she believes vaccines are safe and effective at preventing disease. “This is bringing us up with 45 other states.”

The bill allows families to abstain from vaccinating children if they have religious or philosophical objections and submit a written statement to their child’s public, private or religious school.

It also changes the process for families seeking medical exemptions by allowing a child’s healthcare provider to submit testimony to a school that certain vaccines “are or may be detrimental to the child’s health or are not appropriate.” Currently, medical exemptions must be approved by the state immunization officer.

A departure from precedent

West Virginia previously had some of the highest vaccination rates in the country. A recent U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report on kindergarten vaccination exemptions cited the state 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.

Morrisey, who previously served as West Virginia’s attorney general, said he believes religious exemptions to 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.

Opposition

Those who opposed the bill said the government has a compelling interest in mandating vaccines to protect children’s health. Others said the bill was an example of government overreach — especially when creating mandates for religious or private schools.

The Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, with 4,600 students under its care, has said in the past it would continue mandating vaccinations if given the option and that the diocese has “always maintained our constitutional right to order our schools as we see fit in accord with our beliefs,” according to a statement this week from Spokesperson Tim Bishop.

Republican Sen. Robbie Morris of Randolph County said he believes a religious person shouldn’t be required to take an action that goes against his or her faith. In his view, that is happening under current law because the state doesn’t have a religious exemption.

“The problem is, this bill doesn’t fix that problem — it just switches it from one end of the spectrum to the other,” he said. “We are telling a private religious school that if vaccinations are a tenet of their faith, and you want to require it, you can’t do it. That’s not religious freedom.”

Senators rejected several efforts to amend the bill, including one proposal to allow churches or religious entities to continue requiring vaccinations if doing so is following the tenets of their faith.

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.