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ICAN celebrates a successful conclusion to its federal lawsuit as the West Virginia Department of Health begins providing religious exemptions for school-required vaccines. However, the West Virginia Board of Education has now instructed school districts to refuse the exemptions, in direct conflict with an order from West Virginia’s Governor. Therefore, ICAN’s attorneys are continuing to take action to secure the right to religious exemptions for families throughout the state.
As you know, as part of its “Free the Five” initiative, in April 2023, ICAN supported a lawsuit filed in federal court on behalf of the West Virginia Parents for Religious Freedom and others. Patrick Morrisey—then Attorney General of the state—filed a brief in support of the parents, telling the court that “West Virginia [has] a substantial interest in ensuring the protection of their citizens’ free exercise of religious beliefs and their fundamental, constitutional right to a public education.” He told the court that the lack of a religious exemption denies those rights.
Not long after that, AG Morrisey became Governor Morrisey. In January, Governor Morrisey signed an executive order providing West Virginians the right to religious exemptions from mandatory school vaccines. ICAN, through its attorneys, has continued to pursue litigation to ensure that citizens were able to obtain these exemptions. In May, the plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit received religious exemption letters for their children from the West Virginia Department of Health. Upon reaching this long sought-after goal, ICAN’s attorneys agreed to dismiss the lawsuit.
However, the fight isn’t over. Shortly after parents started receiving religious exemption letters, the West Virginia Board of Education voted unanimously to ignore Governor Morrisey’s executive order by instructing “all school districts to follow the law that has been in effect since 1937.”
The Governor’s office responded: “The West Virginia Board of Education is trampling on the religious liberties of children, ignoring the state’s religious freedom law, and trying to make the state an extreme outlier on vaccine policy when there isn’t a valid public policy reason to do so…. At the Governor’s direction, the Department of Health will continue to grant religious exemptions consistent with the state’s religious freedom law.”
With the help of our supporters, ICAN’s next steps include a suit against the Board of Education. We refuse to stand idly by while the constitutional rights of parents and children in West Virginia continue to be violated, and we will not rest until these children and every other child in the United States has the right to attend school!
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