Several States Are Pushing To Remove Religious Exemptions For School Vaccine Mandates

NBC News (7/5, Edwards) reported an increasing number of states are taking steps to make it more difficult for parents to opt out of school-mandated vaccines. In the past decade, California, Connecticut, Maine, and New York have removed religious and philosophical exemptions “in an effort to drive up vaccination rates.” Maine had one of the nation’s “highest vaccination opt-out rates in 2017, at 5.3%,” but since passing a law in 2019 eliminating exemptions, “Maine’s kindergarten MMR vaccination rate has climbed from less than 94% to nearly 98%.” While schools in Massachusetts “loosened vaccination requirement rules during the pandemic,” a bill working its way through the statehouse would remove “nonmedical exemptions...for vaccination requirements to attend public schools.”