A measure to allow exemptions to school entry vaccination that failed to pass the House of Delegates was resurrected in a Senate Health committee Monday afternoon.
During a Monday afternoon meeting of the Senate Health and Human Resources Committee, religious and philosophical exemptions to school-entry vaccination were amended into House Bill 2776, which would require the Department of Health (DH) to report positive Alpha Gal tests to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
On March 24, the House of Delegates rejected Senate Bill 460, which would have required public schools to accept unvaccinated students with a religious or philosophical exemption.
The last listed action on the legislature’s website for House Bill 2776 is from March 24, 2025.
Chair and Vice Chair of the committee, Senators Laura Chapman, R-Ohio and Vince Deeds, R-Greenbrier, opened the committee meeting by moving the committee to reconsider the vote by which it reported House Bill 2776 to the full Senate, withdrawing a strike and insert amendment.
While the amendment to allow exemptions to vaccination itself is not currently available online, an unidentified member of legislative counsel explained it during the committee meeting.
“It creates a religious exemption by permitting a parent, legal guardian or emancipated child to annually provide a notarized written statement to the school or state regulated child care center on a form created by the DH, that the person holds a religious belief opposed to immunizations, and that the person has reviewed evidence based educational materials provided by the department regarding immunizations,” counsel explained.
Sen. Joey Garcia, D-Marion, requested the amendment be ruled not germane, meaning, not related to the original legislation, but was overruled by Chapman.
“Okay, the request is denied, it is germane,” Chapman said. “This has to deal with disease prevention, and there is a statute on the public health systems. I don’t know if you have that handy, but if you don’t, it’s okay, but the statute itself talks about diseases.”
Sen. Tom Takubo, R-Kanawha, moved to remove language from the bill he said protects a medical provider who knowingly provides false information.
“Is there any trying to think of what the benefit of that would be,” Takubo asked. “Can counsel think of any benefit to why we would want to protect a medical person in providing false information? Is there something I’m missing?”
During the discussion of Takubo’s amendment, Sen. Patricia Rucker, R-Jefferson, asked counsel to explain what Takubo’s amendment would mean for the legislation.
“You’re not supposed to falsify records,” Rucker said. “There’s no, you know, there’s no permission to falsify records. But the language is, is that language meant to take away any kind of fear that the physician is going to be sued for putting in a form that he believes to be necessary.”
The amendment failed.
Sen. Chris Rose, R-Monongalia, moved to further amend House Bill 2776 to include a provision to allow vaccine-exempted children to participate in extracurricular activities.
“Counsel, you’ll probably have to help me with this one, but since we are doing this strike and insert, I would like to amend those that get exemptions under this to also be able to participate in all activities in schools,” Rose said.
The amendment passed without discussion.
Before the committee voted to pass the bill to the floor, two Senators spoke against the re-passage of the bill, as amended.
“After that 42-56 vote rejecting this bill in the West Virginia House of Delegates, my hope would be maybe the people around this table and the people in the Senate would take a second look, because this is one of the the most hugely unpopular and just honestly wrong things that we could be doing for the state of West Virginia,” Garcia said. “With all due respect to the Chair of this committee, to come in here and re-look at a bill related to Alpha Gal regulations, and to put this bill in is absolutely not germane, possibly a double object, and I don’t even know if it’s going to hold up in court, but we’re going to go through all this, and that’s fine, and I’m going to vote no.”
Takubo, a physician by trade, spoke against the passage of the legislation, referencing growing cases of Measles nationwide and the death of a second unvaccinated Texan child last week.
“It is coming here, and it’s going to come here in a bad way, because it’s not just the kids that are involved,” Takubo said. “The drug epidemic has ravaged our population. You’ve got counties where 70% of the kids are being raised by grandparents who have very weakened immune systems. We’re also one of the unhealthy states in the country, you’re going to wipe out a bunch of them, too. So when that happens, I hope this legislature can pat themselves on the back and say, job well done.”
The bill was sent to the Senate floor.
