By Cathi Burys

Cathi volunteers for PCIC on the Legislation Team.

Many of us at PCIC have learned the ways of watching state bills and legal happenings when it comes to medical freedom. We have navigated through the NVIC (National Vaccine Information Center) Advocacy portal to get up-to-date action alerts about important bills coming up for votes or opportunities to attend public hearings. NVIC has always done well at keeping its followers up to date on the exemption options in each state. For many years, there were only two states that did not have a religious exemption for vaccines for K-12 students: Mississippi and West Virginia. In 2015, however, things began to change when California signed into law SB 277. California’s religious/philosophical exemption was removed with this law.  

Shortly after all this happened in California, I began to watch things more carefully in New York where I was living. My children had the religious exemption, so I thought it was important to become more active in the process. Bills came up for a few years and did not get passed. Finally in 2019, the bill to remove the religious exemption moved quickly through health committees, was voted on, and became law. Shortly after this, other states in the Northeast began to fall – first Maine, and then Connecticut. The map of the states on the NVIC website was starting to look bleak and picked apart.  

There was a glimmer of hope In New Jersey, another fight that I watched closely. If there was ever a time to watch medical freedom advocates come together, this was the battle. By a slim margin, New Jersey was able to hang on to their religious exemption – and thank goodness, as many from New York relocated there for just this freedom!  

While all of this was happening, there were advocates in Mississippi who were fighting equally hard to bring their religious exemption back. MPVR (Mississippi Parents for Vaccine Rights) is the primary advocacy group for medical freedom in Mississippi. Del Bigtree of ‘The Highwire’, a medical news talk show, recently featured their story and interviewed their leaders. They discussed that back in 2012, the group really began to form and work with legislators to get back their religious exemption, which Mississippi had not allowed for decades. 

For years the members of MPVR grew and continued to put pressure on the Mississippi state legislature to reinstate the religious exemption. Many members of the senate and house were in support of this bill; however, there always appeared to be difficulty with senate and house leadership to get the bill to a point where it could be voted on. 

After many disappointments, a big change came with COVID and the subsequent lockdowns and restrictive COVID policies. With COVID lockdowns, legal challenges became more prevalent as many worked to protect our first amendment rights and religious freedoms. Cases were won and precedent was set: you could not justify closing down a church in the name of public health when stores such as Walmart were allowed to remain open. The ICAN (Informed Consent Action Network) attorneys used this precedent when seeking a federal lawsuit in the state of Mississippi to bring back the religious exemption for children attending school K-12.  

The attorneys made the case that if the state allows a secular exemption (otherwise known as the medical exemption) to attend school without vaccines, then a religious exemption must also be available to families who desire it because it is set forth as a right in the U.S. Constitution.  

On April 18th, Federal District Judge Halil Suleyman Ozerden of the Southern District of Mississippi ordered this ruling after court deliberations: 

“Effective July 15th, 2023 the Enjoined Parties shall be enjoined from enforcing the Compulsory Vaccination Law unless they provide an option for requesting religious exemption.” 

This is wonderful news for the whole country! It is a huge win for securing vaccine exemptions in the U.S.

You can read more about the court decision on ICAN’s website: https://icandecide.org/press-release/ican-attorneys-secure-religious-exemption-to-vaccination-in-mississippi/ 

Watch the Highwire link to hear the discussion about the process and day in court. https://thehighwire.com/ark-videos/ican-makes-history-in-mississippi/ 

To help further ICAN’s work, you can donate here: https://icandecide.org/support-ican/