West Virginia just cracked open the door to a public health nightmare, all in the name of religious freedom.
On Wednesday, Raleigh County Circuit Judge Michael Froble issued a permanent injunction that guts the state’s long-standing school vaccination mandate. His ruling says parents who object to vaccines on religious grounds can now send their unvaccinated kids to school and let them join extracurricular activities—no shots required.
In his decision, Froble said West Virginia’s policy against religious exemptions violated the Equal Protection for Religion Act, a 2023 law signed by then-Gov. Jim Justice. He concluded that families claiming religious objections must be allowed to opt out. Froble didn’t mince words on the state’s argument that only lawmakers can create vaccine exemptions: “Legislative intent is not absolute nor controlling in interpreting a statute or determining its application; at most, it is a factor.”
This ruling places West Virginia—once known for some of the nation’s strongest vaccination protections—squarely in the camp of states willing to let preventable diseases make a comeback.
As reported by the Associated Press, the chaos didn’t start Wednesday. Earlier this year, Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey issued an executive order allowing religious exemptions, even though West Virginia had long been one of the few states that permitted only medical exemptions. The state Board of Education countered him in June, telling schools to ignore the governor and stick to the law. Now, in a whiplash move after the ruling, the board announced it “hereby suspends the policy on compulsory vaccination requirements” until the state Supreme Court weighs in.
Morrisey—who wasn’t even involved in the lawsuit—celebrated the decision anyway, calling it “a win for every family forced from school over their faith.”
Two groups had sued to block Morrisey’s order, arguing he overstepped and that only the Legislature has the authority to make such changes. Lawmakers themselves failed to pass a bill earlier this year that would have added religious exemptions. Judge Froble said that legislative failure didn’t settle the matter and didn’t override the 2023 religious-protection law.
The case that triggered Wednesday’s ruling began with Miranda Guzman, who sued after receiving a religious exemption for her child—only to have it yanked by her local superintendent. Froble initially granted a preliminary injunction in July so Guzman’s child and two others could attend school without vaccinations. Last month, he escalated the case by certifying it as a class action covering 570 families who sought similar exemptions, and anyone who may seek them in the future. Froble insisted this number “would not meaningfully reduce vaccination rates or increase health risks.”
That’s a generous interpretation. West Virginia’s vaccine requirements—covering everything from measles and mumps to chickenpox, meningitis, and whooping cough—have been praised for decades by medical experts as some of the strongest in the country. Strong enough, in fact, to help keep outbreaks from ripping through classrooms.
Now the state is gambling that hundreds of unvaccinated kids won’t tip the balance.
West Virginia is hardly alone in this drift. At least 30 states now have religious freedom laws, including a new one in Georgia, all modeled on the 1993 federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act signed by President Bill Clinton. Those laws make it easier to challenge regulations that conflict with religious beliefs—even when the regulations exist to keep kids alive and entire communities safe.
Whether the state Supreme Court reverses course or doubles down, one thing is clear: West Virginia just sent a message that personal belief can outweigh public health. And it won’t be viruses that celebrate that decision—it’ll be the diseases we once worked so hard to beat back.
