With less than a week to go during the West Virginia Legislature’s regular session, a Senate committee on Monday resurrected legislation that would loosen the state’s strict school vaccination laws.
The Senate Health Committee approved a version of House Bill 2776 that incorporates the language of Senate Bill 460 with slight changes. The House of Delegates narrowly voted down Senate Bill 460 last month.
As it passed the House of Delegates, House Bill 2776 would have required that the state Department of Health report positive tests of Alpha-gal syndrome, an allergic condition related to tick bites, to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Senate Health Committee’s version of the bill now would add religious exemptions to the state’s vaccine requirements and allow a student’s health care provider to submit a medical exemption without needing approval from the state immunization officer, which would be eliminated under the bill.
Sen. Joey Garcia, D-Marion, argued that the amendment is not germane to the original bill and could violate a constitutional rule that requires that bills have one subject.
Committee Chair Laura Chapman, who had advocated for religious vaccine exemptions, ruled that the amendment is germane because the bill has to do with disease prevention and the state’s public health system.
Garcia opposed the amendment, saying that he had heard more negative opinions about Senate Bill 460 than anything else this legislative session.
“After that 42 to 56 vote rejecting this bill in the West Virginia House of Delegates, my hope would be maybe the people around this table and the people in the Senate would take a second look,” Garcia said. “Because this is one of the most hugely unpopular and just honestly wrong things that we could be doing for the state of West Virginia.”
Sen. Tom Takubo, R-Kanawha, a physician, also argued against the amendment, with comments about a growing measles outbreak in Texas that has so far been linked to the deaths of two children, and other preventable illnesses.
“There’s an adage in medicine, ‘First, do no harm.’ There’s so much in today’s world that these kids have to worry about. Dying and struggling from these completely preventable childhood diseases shouldn’t be one of them,” Takubo said. “This Legislature is dead set on putting our kids in harm’s way.
“If we do what this bill is trying to do, we’re going to go from one of the best [vaccinated] to one of the worst in just a matter of years,” he said. “We’re the worst vaccinated state in the country until it’s time to go to school. Then we become one of the best.”
Under the new version of the bill, parents and guardians or emancipated students could annually submit a notarized statement to their school or child care center administrator on a form created by the state department of health that says the person holds a religious belief that is opposed to vaccination and that they have reviewed information about vaccinations provided by the department. There’s also an exemption for full-time virtual students.
Schools would be required to create and maintain reports including the number and percentage of students granted exemptions.
The bill, in its current version, would not allow the state’s religious and private schools to set their own policies for vaccination requirements.
All states require students to be vaccinated for a series of infectious diseases including measles, polio and chickenpox. Until this year, West Virginia was among five states that did not allow exemptions to those requirements based on religious or philosophical beliefs. The state’s laws have only allowed medical exemptions, which have required the approval of the state’s immunization officer.
Gov. Patrick Morrisey issued an executive order in January requiring the state to allow religious exemptions on his second day in office.
According to the state Department of Health, the state approved 186 religious exemptions in the approximately two months after Morrisey’s executive order.
The bill was read a first time on the Senate floor Monday. It will be on second reading, amendment stage, on Tuesday before a vote by the full Senate.
The House of Delegates would next have to sign off on the bill, a version of which it’s already voted down. The regular session of the Legislature ends Saturday at midnight.
This article originally appeared on West Virginia Watch.
West Virginia Watch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com.
