WV Vaccine Law Violates Parents’ Religious Beliefs

In January 2025, West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrissey issued an executive order that religious exemptions be granted for state-school vaccine mandates, in which the state Department of Health granted the exemptions. However, the state board of education refused to accept these exemptions. In November, a Raleigh County judge sided with the parents in a lawsuit and issued a permanent injunction requiring state education officials to accept the exemptions. Fourteenth Judicial Circuit Judge Michael Froble certified a whole class of families with religious objections to mandated vaccines statewide, except for families involved in separate lawsuits, citing the state’s Equal Protection for Religion Act protects religious faith from government overreach.

The “universal-denial policy” substantially burdens religious exercise by forcing parents “to choose between vaccination and public education,” wrote Judge Froble.

State education officials are appealing the ruling to the West Virginia Supreme Court.

In the amicus brief, Liberty Counsel argues the state’s high court should uphold the ruling because the state vaccine law “conditions school attendance on parents’ willingness to violate their religious beliefs.” Since the parents’ religious beliefs do not condone certain vaccines, the law’s burden on their religious exercise is “clear” because it requires both parents and students to “perform an act” contrary to the parents’ religious beliefs to receive a government benefit.

“This direct form of coercion cannot ‘be squared with the First Amendment,’” wrote Liberty Counsel.

State education officials claim that “individual religious rights must yield to the state’s compulsory vaccination laws,” noted Liberty Counsel. However, even during the “once-in-a-lifetime” COVID-19 pandemic, in which Liberty Counsel successfully challenged federal and state restrictions on religious exercise, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled “government regulations cannot treat any comparable secular activity more favorably than religious exercise.”

Even under emergency circumstances, the government cannot “curtail the free exercise of religion under the guise of public health,” and the “widespread” use of exemptions across at least 45 other states show West Virginia’s claims fail under both the availability of less restrictive measures and the First Amendment, concluded Liberty Counsel.

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “West Virginia’s Vaccine law cannot treat parental religious rights as optional. The First Amendment and the state’s Equal Protection for Religion Act do allow for the violation of religious beliefs to be the cost of educating children. West Virginia is an outlier when it comes to religious exemptions for vaccines. Forty-five other states have religious exemptions. West Virginia needs to get in line with the constitutional guarantees of religious exercise. The West Virginia Supreme Court now has the chance to protect and accommodate the faith of parents and their children.”