Alabama Senate bill would make it easier to get religious exemptions for school vaccinations

A bill introduced in the Alabama Senate would make it easier to receive a religious exemption from school vaccination requirements.

SB 246, sponsored by Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, states that a “parent or guardian may not be required to explain the reason for the exemption, certify the exemption with any third party, or otherwise receive approval from the local board of education or any other entity.”

The bill would also provide that a public institution of higher education must provide religious and medical exemptions to vaccination requirements.

“This would prevent people from having to go explain their religious exemption motivations or their religious beliefs to government bureaucrats at the health department,” Orr said in a phone interview on Thursday.

Currently, parents seeking an exemption must go to the county health department and get a certificate of religious exemption. They file a written objection and receive information about the consequences of not immunizing their child.

Orr feels that people shouldn’t have to “go to the government to validate [their] religious beliefs.”

“It ought to be simple: If we’re going to have a religious exemption, we ought to have a religious exemption. We shouldn’t have parents having to explain their religious beliefs when it comes to vaccinations,” Orr said.

Mark Jackson, executive director of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama, said they have not taken a position on Orr’s bill, but expressed concerns with exemptions. During the first two years of the COVID outbreak, vaccination rates dropped significantly. While they are coming up again, they aren’t where it needs to be.

“We are concerned with the rising number of exemptions which means fewer vaccines being administered,” Jackson said in an email.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccination rate in Alabama was just under 94% in 2022-2023, down from 95% for the 2021-2022 school year.

The CDC says that at least 95% of the population needs to be vaccinated against measles to create herd immunity. Nine out of 10 unvaccinated people become infected after being exposed to the virus.

While medical exemptions have remained at a steady rate over the last decade, according to the CDC data, non-medical exemptions have increased significantly, from .5% of kindergarteners in Alabama in the 2011-2012 school year to 2% in 2022-2023.

Dr. Scott Harris, state health officer for Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH), has expressed concern at the department’s board meetings about the decreasing vaccination rates.

Rob Green, a spokesman for ADPH, declined to comment on the bill Thursday but said that decreases in childhood vaccination have led to increases in measles cases across the nation.

The last outbreak of measles in Alabama happened in late 2002, Green said, after one unvaccinated person spread the virus to 13 people who were unvaccinated or not old enough to be vaccinated.

“We haven’t had any cases since 2002, but it’s concerning,” Green said. “Measles is very dangerous if you’re an adolescent and you contract it and you’re exposed to other adolescents that have not been vaccinated.”

National MMR vaccination rates among kindergarten students have fallen below the target of 95% for the second consecutive year nationwide. The percentage of kindergarteners with all state-required vaccines nationwide has decreased over two school years since the pandemic began, dropping from approximately 95% in 2019-2020 to 93% in 2021-2022.

The decline, though small, represents the lowest MMR vaccination rate in nearly a decade, leaving roughly 250,000 school children unvaccinated against measles, according to an analysis from KFF, a non-profit organization that provides health policy research.

While Orr said that he’s not aware of any request for religious exceptions being denied at the county health department, he still disagreed with parents having to go through the exemption process.

“Government should not stand in the way of parents and their religious beliefs when it comes to vaccinations,” he said.