UPDATE 12/3/2025: Kids will still need to be vaccinated in order to attend school in West Virginia following a state Supreme Court order on Dec. 2. The order blocked a ruling last week in Raleigh County Circuit Court that would’ve allowed unvaccinated children to attend the state’s public and private schools if they had a religious exemption.
Over the last few years, West Virginia’s robust vaccination law has been under attack in the courtroom, the Governor’s Office and the halls of the Legislature.
For generations, parents have been required to vaccinate their children from diseases such as polio, measles and whooping cough before sending them to school. Unlike most states, West Virginia does not allow for religious exemptions.
Consequently, the state has some of the highest immunization rates for school children in the country.
So here’s what you need to know about what’s happening and why it matters.
How is West Virginia’s vaccine law under attack?
West Virginia is just one of five states in the country that does not provide a religious exemption to vaccinations for children to attend public or private school.
“There’s no doubt that our high vaccination rates in West Virginia are due to the school entry requirements,” said Dr. Matthew Christiansen, the state’s former health officer. “These vaccines for kids prevent disease.”
However, a small movement against vaccines in the country was supercharged during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nonprofits like the Informed Consent Action Network have seen donations rise from a few million to tens of millions of dollars.
In West Virginia, opponents to the law have said the lack of religious exemptions is an attack on the freedom of religion enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
On his first day in office, Gov. Patrick Morrisey, a Republican, signed an executive order allowing for religious exemptions to be processed. This school year, almost 600 children are reported to have been granted religious exemptions.
During the 2025 session, lawmakers heavily debated adding a religious exemption to the law, but despite pressure from outside groups, declined to do so.
Legal conflicts erupted over the summer after the state Board of Education refused to recognize the religious exemption Morrisey established with his executive order. At least four lawsuits have been filed in the state by parents who say schools should follow the governor’s order and not the current vaccine law.
What happens when fewer people get vaccinated?
Texas and Washington state both grant religious or philosophically based exemptions to parents who do not want their children vaccinated.
Half the counties in Texas have childhood vaccination rates below 95%, which is the threshold to prevent a mass outbreak. Earlier this year, a Mennonite community in Texas with low vaccination rates had a measles outbreak that spread to nearly 800 people.
Washington state has seen whooping cough vaccination rates plummet to 65% – and has had cases of the disease go from 87 in 2023 to 2,261 cases in 2024.
Melissa Wervey Gittelman, CEO of the Ohio Chapter for the American Academy of Pediatrics, said her state – which also allows for a philosophical exemption — has struggled for years with outbreaks of diseases thought to have been eradicated.
She said it isn’t pretty.
“When you’re looking at measles, there’s possible long term effects,” she said. “You can have neurological damage that’s lasting. You can have blindness, you can have deafness. You can be hospitalized for a long period of time and have immunocompromised issues over it.”
So far, two children have died of measles in Texas. And at least one child has died in Washington state of whooping cough.
While most states allow religious exemptions, some states like California, Maine and New York have eliminated theirs in the last decade.
Three years after California eliminated its religious exemption law, the American Academy of Family Physicians noted kindergarten immunization rates were at an all time high.
For Gittelman in Ohio, efforts to roll back philosophical exemptions have been unsuccessful.
“We have tried, but right now in Ohio, it’s very political,” she said.
My family and I are vaccinated. We should be protected, right?
Kentucky attorney Chris Wiest is one of the attorneys representing parents suing the Board of Education in West Virginia to honor religious exemptions. Wiest said he’s not too concerned that a successful challenge to the law could result in outbreaks of disease. He pointed out that homeschool children have never been required to be vaccinated.
“It is crazy to think that these kids create some sort of risk, because they’re already there, and they have been for years,” he said.
But diseases that have been eradicated in an area — such as measles in the United States — can come back if an unvaccinated person carrying the disease comes to a community with lower vaccination rates.
And the homeschool population is growing in West Virginia.
“Children who are homeschooled have interactions with other children – they go to swimming pools, they’re on sports teams, they go to movies, they go to birthday parties, they’re not living in an isolated cocoon or bubble where they’re not coming into contact with somebody with these types of infections,” said Dr. Judith Feinberg, a doctor of epidemiology at West Virginia University.
“The fact it hasn’t happened yet is pure luck,” she added.
If the vast majority of people are vaccinated, then a disease like measles — which Feinberg said can still be contagious in a doctor’s waiting room up to six hours after a patient has left — probably won’t spread.
But when immunization rates drop, more people are susceptible to the disease. Like a spark landing on a dry forest bed, one infection results in a roaring outbreak.
Plus, vaccines aren’t 100% effective. So even people who have gotten the jab can still catch a virus. Others at risk include infants, who can’t be vaccinated against certain diseases until they are older, and people with various medical conditions that make them unable to get a vaccine.
“It’s like not yelling fire in a crowded place,” Feinberg said. “You do certain things because it’s good for everybody.”
What happens next?
So far, three out of the four cases that were filed over the summer by parents in West Virginia have been dismissed from court. However, one case in Raleigh County still survives.
In that case, Circuit Court Judge Michael Froble gave the case a class-action status. That means any final ruling in that case would apply to all parents seeking a religious exemption for their children, not just the parents in Raleigh County.
Lawyers for the state and county school system have asked the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals to step in, arguing that Froble exceeded his jurisdiction.
The West Virginia Legislature is scheduled for its regular session in January. If past years are any indication, there could be another effort to amend the current vaccination law to allow for a religious exemption.
In 2024, lawmakers sent a bill gutting the state’s vaccination mandate to then-Gov. Jim Justice. He vetoed that measure.
“West Virginia is way ahead of the pack in protecting our children from preventable diseases like the measles, and in this matter, I will defer to our licensed medical professionals who have come forward overwhelmingly to say this bill could and likely would result in reduced immunity and harm to West Virginia’s kids,” Justice wrote in his veto message.
“Our kids are our future. They are our most important resource, and I will protect them with everything I have,” he added.
But Morrisey has said he would sign it.
And although West Virginia hasn’t seen mass outbreaks of disease, cases have popped up. Last year, in Monongalia County, one person was reported with measles. This year, 22 cases of whooping cough were reported.
A relaxed exemption would mean more likelihood of a major outbreak.
“That is the primary concern that kids, vulnerable, kids, kids that can’t make these decisions for themselves, are going to be subject to the effects of this policy,” Christiansen said. “As a primary care doctor, as a dad myself, I want kids to be healthy.”
Disclosure: The law firm of Bailey & Glasser represents the state Board of Education in the Raleigh County vaccine case. One of the firm’s co-founders, Ben Bailey, is chairman of Mountain State Spotlight’s board of directors.