Despite a rebuke to religious exemptions to school vaccine requirements by state lawmakers Monday, the West Virginia Bureau for Public Health said Tuesday it will continue to abide by an executive order from Gov. Patrick Morrisey requiring religious exemptions.
“Yesterday’s House vote on Senate Bill 460 does not affect Gov. Morrisey’s executive order allowing for religious exemptions for school vaccines,” Gailyn M. Markham, deputy director of communications for the Office of Shared Administration, wrote in an email. “The West Virginia Department of Health will continue to abide by and comply with that order.”
Julie Bertram, health services coordinator for Wood County Schools, said since the Jan. 14 executive order, the Bureau for Public Health has responded to a few families in her school system who have requested religious exemptions that the state would take “no action” in court over the child not meeting the immunization requirements. The families, school nurses and the school system should also get a copy of the letter from the bureau, she said.
School nurses then notify the families that they received a letter about their exemption from the Bureau for Public Health and that their child may enter school.
Bertram said after the Legislature rejected the bill, she questions whether the letter qualifies as an exemption.
The state Department of Education has not given school nurses, who have historically enforced the immunization laws, any new guidance on the matter Tuesday, Bertram said.
A spokesperson for the state Department of Education did not immediately respond to a question about how the department had advised parents who ask about religious exemptions.
The House voted down Senate Bill 460 with a vote of 42 yays and 56 nays on Monday. The legislation would have allowed families who object to the shots on religious grounds to submit a written statement to their school administrator in order to be exempt from the requirements. The state’s private and parochial schools would have been able to set their own requirements for vaccines. It also would have revamped the process the state has for medical exemption for vaccination requirements, allowing a child’s medical provider to submit a medical exemption without needing approval from the state immunization officer.
Until the executive order, West Virginia was among only five states in the country that allowed only medical exemptions to the school vaccination requirements. Following the vote Monday, state Democrats called on the governor to rescind the executive order.
A spokesman for Morrisey said the order remains in effect and would not be rescinded.
“We still have three weeks of [the legislative] session, so they may try to bring [the legislation] back, but I’m pretty sure that West Virginians have spoken,” Bertram said. “I think the legislators have gone out and spoken to the communities, they’ve polled West Virginians, and I think they feel pretty strongly, that’s how they could get those Republicans on board with them that West Virginians are not for this, the vast majority.”
