Ladapo: Eliminating vaccine mandates isn’t about science, it’s about parents’ rights

Florida State Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo is a well-known vaccine skeptic.

But on Thursday he said the state’s drive to change its rules to eliminate four vaccines children are required to take to enter school or daycare centers has nothing to do with science or the efficacy of the vaccines.

It is about putting parents in charge of their children’s healthcare.

“You know, this isn’t about the scientific effectiveness of one vaccine or the other, the safety of one vaccine or the other,” Ladapo told a crowd attending a rule workshop in Lake Mary. The DOH, he said, is “open to hearing about that.”

But he said the pursuit of public health “cannot supersede the right of a parent to make a decision about what’s best for their child. Period. It’s not complicated. It’s very simple in that respect. Those are very important concerns.”

Eimear Roy, a parent and self-described healthcare community advocate from Orange County who suffers from long-term COVID, disagreed.

“So, I’d really love the Department of Health to be about health. Health is not intuition. Health is not parent rights. I’ve seen parent rights, parent right movement. The parent rights, my rights as a parent, do not exceed the rights of other humans to exist,” she said.

“And this is fundamentally it. No one wants to take away the choice. Every parent should decide for their child about vaccines, but what you can’t decide is my right to exist,” she said.

She testified that once vaccines are eliminated insurance companies will no longer cover them and poor people with health problems who are uninsured or don’t qualify for Medicaid would be placed at greater risk.

“So, absolutely, the choice is the parents.’ But with that choice comes the effect, and the effect is maybe then you can’t go to public school,” she said.

DOH authority

Florida law requires children at a minimum to be immunized for poliomyelitis, diphtheria, rubeola, rubella, pertussis, mumps, and tetanus to attend school but allows exemptions for valid medical and religious reasons.

The DOH holds authority under statute to also require vaccinations for “other communicable diseases as determined.” Under that authority, the DOH has required children to also be immunized for haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), hepatitis B, varicella (chickenpox), and pneumococcal conjugate.

The health department has moved to change its rules to eliminate the four vaccines that aren’t included in statute.

Supporters praised Ladapo for having the tenacity to tackle vaccine mandates and promote what they called “medical freedom.” One woman said she hopes Ladapo’s reign as state’s healthcare czar and secretary of the Florida Department of Health transcends DeSantis’ term as governor, which comes to an end in January. 

Another woman, the last to testify during the meeting, wrapped up her comments by requesting a selfie with Ladapo.

And even though allegations that the measles/mumps/rubella vaccine was linked to autism — a theory initially espoused in 1988 by a British physician but debunked by several large studies since then — some proponents of the changes mentioned autism in their public testimony.

Allison Euker was one of them.

Euker, who testified that her child was injured by a vaccine, thanked Ladapo for “being the light in the darkness of the captured medical system,” and blasted organized medicine for “pushing the narratives” that she said financially benefit the pharmaceutical industry.

“The doctors and medical professionals fall in line. If they don’t, they suffer career-ending recourse,” Eucker said. “But if they do, they profit from injecting kids, and who suffers? The child, the families, left with gaslighting from most doctors who will never mention that the tics, the autism, the speech impediments, the ADHD are all serious side effects from the multiple vaccines they push at every visit.”

Several people who testified in favor of the change were people new to Florida who said they moved here because of changes being made to vaccine policies.

That was Suzanne Moanco’s story, who moved to Winter Springs from Oregon following experiences in the Oregon Capitol trying to beat back vaccine mandates.

“That taught me medical freedom shouldn’t be political,” she said.

She added: “It makes sense to remove these vaccine requirements. When it comes to my kids, that decision belongs to me as their parent, not the state, not my nosy neighbor, and not a politician.”

The process

DeSantis and Ladspo last year announced they wanted to eliminate all vaccine mandates from Florida statutes.

The state last year published a proposed rule to eliminate mandates for vaccines required through administrative rule and to add moral or conscientious to the medical and religious exemptions already allowed.

The DOH held a public meeting in Panama City Beach in December. 

Florida school, daycare vaccine tussle kicks off in Panama City Beach

The administration in the beginning of the year started working with the Legislature to accomplish its goal. 

After the proposals died in the regular legislative session and subsequent special legislative session, the DeSantis administration vowed to work on the issue long as he remains governor.

DeSantis’ resolve to pass his vaccine policies strengthens as measles cases continue to rise

To that end, his administration returned its focus to making the changes administratively. 

It republished the proposed rule it first introduced in 2025 and later published a change to the rule that eliminated conscientious and moral objections as valid. It also scheduled the Lake Mary rule hearing.

Because Thursday’s meeting was a rule hearing, the questions being asked of the DOH weren’t limited.

(A rule hearing is one step under Florida’s Administrative Procedures Act. Following a rule hearing, an agency can address any concerns raised and revise the proposal. Any changes made to a proposed rule must be published by the state within 21 days.)

Or the agency can go ahead and adopt the rule.

The APA also gives any affected party an opportunity to file a rule challenge with the state Division of Administrative Hearings and request that it be heard by a administrative law judge.