West Virginia Bureau for Public Health submits vaccine exemption plan

“It outlines the necessary steps for ensuring individuals can exercise their right to opt-out of the vaccination requirement based on sincerely held religious or conscientious beliefs,” Moore said. “We are committed to ensuring that public health policies remain fair and accessible while respecting individual rights.”

Morrisey’s order directed the bureau and the health officer to devise a “proposal for any necessary legislation and rules to enable and facilitate a statewide exemption to the compulsory school immunization” required by state code. The exemption is to be for “objections based on religious and moral beliefs.”

Also, the Bureau for Public Health and state health officer are to tell Morrisey’s office the “number of people who have filled written objections” to school vaccine requirements.

Dr. Matthew Christiansen, the state’s most recent health officer, stepped down from his position effective Dec. 13. Morrisey has not yet named Christiansen’s successor.

Current state code prevents students from attending “the schools of the state or a state-regulated child care center” unless they have been immunized against chickenpox, hepatitis-B, measles, meningitis, mumps, diphtheria, polio, rubella, tetanus and whooping cough.

Morrisey’s order directs the commissioner of the Bureau for Public Health and the state health officer to “establish a process” for objections from parents and guardians who want to send their students to state schools but who “object on religious or conscientious grounds.”

Morrisey has said the executive order builds on a law passed by the state Legislature in 2023.

“We’re going to be implementing the Equal Protection for Religion Act (of 2023),” he said. “We’re ensuring that current policy — which does not recognize a religious, conscientious exemption for vaccines — is being changed.”

The act “strongly argues in favor” of these exemptions, Morrisey said.

“West Virginia right now is an outlier,” he said. “There are only several states that don’t recognize religious exemption. Today that changes.”

Washington, D.C., and 30 states allow exemptions for people who have religious objections to immunizations.

Thirteen states allow exemptions for either religious or personal reasons, according to information from the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The states that do not allow any type of non-medical exemption include West Virginia, California, New York, Connecticut and Maine.