“Medical Freedom” Activists Aim at a New Target: Childhood Vaccination Mandates

Mississippi has long had high childhood vaccination rates, but a federal judge ordered the state to allow parents to opt out of religious reasons.

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">For more than 40 years, Mississippi had one of the strictest school vaccination requirements in the country, and its high rates of childhood vaccination are a source of pride. But in July, the state began exempting children from vaccination if their parents cited religious objections, after a federal judge sided with a "medical freedom" group.

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Today, 2,100 Mississippi schoolchildren are officially exempt from vaccination for religious reasons. Five hundred others are exempt because their state of health prevents vaccination. State Health Officer Dr. Daniel P. Edney warns that if the total number of exemptions exceeds 3,000, Mississippi will once again face the risk of deadly diseases that are only a memory.

“Over the past 40 years, our primary goal has been to protect children most at risk from measles, mumps, rubella and polio,” said Dr. Edney in an interview, “and it's these children who have chronic illnesses that make them more vulnerable. He called the decision “a very bitter pill to swallow.”

Mississippi is not an isolated case. Building on their success in overturning coronavirus mandates, medical and religious freedom groups are setting their sights on a new target: mandates to vaccinate children in schools, long considered the bedrock of the nation's defense against infectious diseases.

Until Mississippi's decision, the state of Mississippi was one of six states to refuse to exempt students from vaccination for religious or philosophical reasons. Similar legal challenges have been filed in the remaining five states: California, Connecticut, Maine, New York and West Virginia. The ultimate goal, proponents of these lawsuits say, is to overturn vaccine mandates altogether, bringing the issue to a Supreme Court increasingly sympathetic to religious liberty arguments.