West Virginia Legislature convenes for start of session 

The West Virginia Legislature gaveled in on Wednesday for the first day of its 60-day regular session. 

In the House of Delegates, lawmakers approved new rules for the chamber that ended a requirement to hold hearings for bills when requested. 

Senators had a light agenda Wednesday, introducing 299 bills and referring them to various committees as well as introducing a handful of resolutions and passing one. Lawmakers planned to take on legislation about vaccines later this week. 

Senate Health Committee Chairwoman Laura Chapman, R-Ohio, said her committee would meet Thursday and take up legislation codifying Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s executive order carving out religious or moral exemptions to the state’s school vaccine requirements and changing the process by which parents request a medical exemption to the school vaccine laws. 

Under the bill, which Chapman said was not ready on Wednesday, the child’s physician could give a medical exemption. 

Under the current law, a child’s doctor would submit a request for a medical exemption along with documentation to the state immunization officer to approve a permanent or temporary exemption or deny the exemption request. 

“The process right now is very unfair,” Chapman said. “It’s complicated, and there are a lot of denials. The process right now is that if a child’s doctor says that a particular vaccine is not appropriate for that child, that child has to petition an immunization officer who never examines the child, doesn’t know the child’s family history, and then either accepts or denies the doctor’s recommendation that child not receive a vaccine.”

According to a report by the state Bureau for Public Health, there were 53 requests for medical exemptions in 2023. Of those, 24 got temporary exemptions, nine got permanent exemptions and 19 were denied. 

For a religious exemption, a parent would submit a signed written statement about the religious or moral exemption to their child’s school or day care administrator. Chapman said that under the bill, anyone who asks for a religious exemption for vaccine requirements would be granted one. 

“There’s case law on that. You’re not allowed to question somebody’s religious beliefs,” she said. “I don’t believe that there could even be an approval process. It’s up to the parent.”

All states require school students to be vaccinated for a series of infectious diseases. Until this year, West Virginia has been one of five states that allow only medical exemptions to the state’s school vaccination requirements. Health officials in the state have credited the vaccination laws with preventing outbreaks of measles and other diseases in West Virginia as they have in other states. 

The state’s Republican-led Legislature has been pushing for years to water down the state’s strong vaccination laws. Last year, after lawmakers passed a bill allowing private schools to establish their own vaccination requirements, former Gov. Jim Justice vetoed the bill. 

Gov. Patrick Morrisey issued an executive order requiring the state to allow religious exemptions to those vaccine requirements on his second day in office.

“Until the executive order, we were one of five states that doesn’t allow for religious exemptions, so essentially we are denying a child or an education,” Chapman said. “We’re in the super duper minority. And so these other states have found that it is safe to allow students to exercise their religious beliefs. As a relatively religious state, it’s always kind of shocked me that we weren’t also honoring that religious belief.”

The legislation, should it pass out of the Senate, won’t be taken up in the House next week, according to Del. Evan Worrell, chair of the House Health Committee. 

While Worrell, R-Cabell, is supportive of vaccine exemptions, he said that next week’s Health Committee agenda was set and wouldn’t include vaccine-related bills.