Seen here is West Virginia's Capitol dome in Charleston, West Virginia. (AP Photo/Jeff Gentner, File)
A federal appeals court last August upheld a 2021 Connecticut law that eliminated the state’s longstanding religious exemption from childhood immunization requirements for schools, colleges and day care facilities. And in Mississippi, a federal judge ruled in April 2023 that the state must allow such exemptions.
Other states that currently don’t have religious exemptions for school immunization requirements are California, Maine and New York, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Unless they have a valid medical excuse, children entering school for the first time in West Virginia currently must be immunized against nine diseases or infections, including chickenpox, measles, whooping cough and tetanus.
Kanawha County Republican JB Akers said he supports the religious exemption but doesn’t like how the bill would let private schools decide on student vaccine requirements while public school students currently must be immunized.
"I think we are potentially creating an equal protection problem," he said in voting against the bill.
Students who compete in state-sponsored athletic competitions must be immunized and cannot receive a religious exemption under the bill.
Kanawha County Democrat Mike Pushkin chided the House for meddling with the current school vaccine law.
"We do not have the right to harm others," Pushkin said. "This bill does harm."
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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, West Virginia’s life expectancy in 2020 was 72.8 years. Only Mississippi’s was lower at 71.9. West Virginia has the nation’s highest death rate from diabetes and heart disease, and has long had the nation’s highest drug-related death rate. It was among three states with an obesity prevalence of 40% or greater in adults in 2022, the CDC said.
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