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California state legislature votes to eliminate ‘personal belief’ vaccine waiver
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The California state Senate recently passed a bill to eliminate ‘personal belief’ exemptions that currently allow parents to choose to opt their child out of school vaccine requirements.
Senate Bill 277 — authored by Richard Pan, MD, a pediatrician and senator representing Sacramento and Senator Ben Allen, the former Board President of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District — was passed by the state Senate at a vote of 25 to 10, and will now advance to the Assembly.
Richard Pan
Under the proposed measure, children would be required to be vaccinated prior to entering kindergarten. Exemptions based on personal and religious objections would no longer be permitted, while medical exemptions would still be accepted.
“A child should never have to suffer through and possibly die from a vaccine-preventable disease,” Pan said in a press release. “The personal belief exemption is now putting other school children and people in our community in danger, and if we fail to act, we will continue to see outbreaks just like the one at Disneyland.”
Parents who choose not to vaccinate will be required to home-school their children, participate in a multi-family private home school or use independent study programs administered by local education agencies.
“I believe in the safety and efficacy of vaccines. I also believe the state has an obligation to protect the public health of its citizens,” Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) said in the release. “SB 277, of which I’m a co-author, strikes a balance between individual rights and the common good, and responsibly strengthens our vaccine laws to protect children and keep our schools safe in the wake of recent outbreaks of serious diseases like measles and whooping cough.”
If SB 277 is signed into law, California will join 32 other states that currently do not allow parents to use ‘personal belief’ exemptions to opt out of vaccination requirements.