California vaccination law could serve as a national model despite challenges
Despite potential legal and enforcement challenges, California’s new vaccination law may set a precedent for other states, according to Stanford scholars.
The law, SB 277, ends exceptions to vaccination mandates based on religious and philosophical beliefs, leaving only medical exemptions as a path to avoid the vaccinations children are required to have before entering school.
David Studdert, a core faculty member at the Center for Health Policy/Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research, and Michelle Mello, a core faculty member of Health Research and Policy, authored a report on the new law along with Northwestern Law School’s Wendy Parmet, which appears today in the New England Journal of Medicine. Studdert and Mello are both professors of law and medicine at Stanford.
Studdert, Mello, and Parmet discuss four factors that led to passage of the law. Strong advocacy by several members of the California legislature was one factor. Another was the state’s efforts to publicize data showing that personal belief exemptions have doubled since 2007, enough to endanger the community. In addition, there is mounting evidence that the recent measles outbreak at Disneyland could have been prevented by better vaccination compliance. Finally, supporters of SB 277 highlighted the risks unvaccinated school children pose to vulnerable classmates. According to the report, “the bill’s proponents focused on the specific threat to schoolchildren who are too medically fragile to receive vaccinations, effectively framing vaccine refusal as a decision that endangers others rather than a purely ‘personal’ one.”
SB 277 could place pressure on other states to tighten their exemptions for school-entry vaccination requirements. At this time, only West Virginia and Mississippi have legislation that prevents personal belief exemptions for vaccination. Adding California may give such laws national attention, and Studdert said that this development may be an “indication that politics are starting to shift.”
However, opponents of the law are likely to challenge it in court. Challengers may argue that the law impinges on their First Amendment rights to free exercise of religious beliefs or that it violates unvaccinated children’s right to access public schools. However, Studdert “would be very surprised if SB 277 ends up being struck down as a result of such challenges.” In the past, courts have ruled in favor of public health agencies in similar cases. “For over a century, appellate courts accepted arguments that mass vaccination is crucial to the well-being of the community.”
A more difficult challenge is enforcement of the law. Unvaccinated children can still attend school as long as their parents pledge to complete the children’s required vaccinations, and schools are not penalized for failing to follow up. The authors argue that “state laws should instead task health departments with enforcement responsibility for vaccination mandates” in order to boost compliance. “Willing providers,” or doctors who sympathize with vaccination opponents, may also undermine enforcement if they choose a broad interpretation of the medical exemption criteria. Other ways around the stricter requirements include home-schooling and nannies. This would not affect school safety but could have implications for the larger community.