California's vaccine law at risk?

Five states have laws banning religious exemptions to school shots. Trump administration is moving to expand parents' right to opt out.

- BY JENNY GOLD

LAWYER Aaron Siri, left, Toby Rogers and Dr. Jake Scott testify at a Senate hearing on vaccines Tuesday.

A series of federal actions aimed at pressuring states to allow parents to opt out of school vaccine mandates for religious or personal reasons threatens to undermine California's ironclad ban on such exemptions.

California is one of just five states that bans any nonmedical exemptions, the result of a landmark 2015 law passed in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak. Connecticut, New York, Maine, and West Virginia have similar statutes.

The law is credited with bringing California's rate of kindergartners vaccinated against the measles to 96.1% in the 2024-25 school year, up from 92.6% in 2014-15, even as the national rate declined. California is one of just 10 states with a kindergarten measles vaccination rate that exceeds the 95% threshold experts say is needed to achieve herd immunity.

If vaccine mandates are weakened, “we're going to have more outbreaks, and schools are going to be less safe for the families who have children who are vulnerable,” said Dr. Eric Ball, a pediatrician in Orange County and chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics California.

Key actions to allow for vaccine exemptions include:

■Legislation introduced in Congress last month would withhold federal education funding from states without religious exemptions.

■ A letter from the Department of Health and Human Services threatened to withhold federal vaccine funding from states that have any form of religious freedom or personal conscience laws but do not allow exemptions to vaccines. The move is “part of a larger effort by HHS to strengthen enforcement of laws protecting conscience and religious exercise.”

Several lawsuits winding their way through the courts from parents — including in California — seek the right to a religious exemption, which may eventually come before the Supreme Court.