WV Senate committee’s vaccine exemption amendment is withdrawn from Alpha-gal bill

West Virginia senators on Thursday walked back a “possum” attempt to get religious exemptions for the state’s strict school immunization requirements into state code after the legislation failed to pass in the House.

Senate Health Committee Chairwoman Laura Wakim Chapman, R-Ohio, withdrew a committee amendment to House Bill 2776 that would have incorporated a version of Senate Bill 460, allowing religious exemptions for school vaccine requirements and revising the existing medical exemption process. 

In a speech from the Senate floor Thursday evening, Chapman attributed withdrawing the amendment to “Big Pharma” and “Big Medicine” not wanting the policy and killing it.

“Make no mistake, Big Pharma and Big Medicine aren’t influencing our policies. They are buying them,” she said. “They’re buying them through radio ads, newspaper ads and TV ads. They’re buying them by spending millions to get their candidates elected.”

The Senate passed House Bill 2776, requiring the state Bureau for Public Health to report positive cases of the tick-borne condition Alpha-gal syndrome, to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, without the vaccine amendment.  

The Senate Health Committee added the vaccine exemption amendment Monday over objections from Sen. Joey Garcia, D-Marion, that the addition of vaccine exemptions was not germane to the bill. 

Garcia on Monday called the committee’s amendment a “possum,” a reference to inserting inactive bills into active bills late in the 60-day session.

Chapman told West Virginia MetroNews she felt so strongly that families should be able to opt out of the requirements that she thought the policy deserved another shot at passing. 

She defended the vaccine exemption legislation Thursday evening, saying that if it had become law, it would have allowed meaningful medical exemptions and a “very tight religious exemption,” as 45 others states allow.

Chapman also defended inserting the language of the bill into the Alpha-gal legislation, saying that before doing so she checked with the Senate parliamentarian to see if the bill was germane. 

“Make no mistake, this issue is not going away, and I’m not going to give up,” Chapman said. “There are more like me in the Legislature who are not going to give up on this issue. 

“We want our children to receive an education. We want religious liberty, and we want our young families to remain in the greatest state of the nation,” she said. “We fight for the children of West Virginia, not big health care’s bottom line. Let it be known to the people of West Virginia that there are good people fighting for you, every day.”

The Senate this year signed off on Senate Bill 460, but the House of Delegates rejected the legislation with a 42 to 56 vote.

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. Despite the House voting down the legislation, the state Department of Health has said it will continue to abide by the governor’s order. 

The regular session ends Saturday at midnight.