The Freedom From Religion Foundation is warning that coordinated efforts to dismantle longstanding school vaccine requirements threaten both public health and constitutional governance.
According to recent reporting, allies of the U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are working state by state to eliminate or severely weaken laws requiring children to be vaccinated before attending public schools. Public health experts warn that rolling back these requirements will lead to preventable outbreaks of measles, polio and other infectious diseases — some of which are already resurging.
“Public schools are government institutions,” says Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president. “Their obligation is to protect the health and safety of all children — not to bow to ideological campaigns dressed up as ‘medical freedom.’ Religious liberty does not include the right to endanger others.”
School-entry immunization requirements have been upheld by courts for more than a century, recognizing the government’s compelling interest in protecting public health. Vaccine mandates are not theological doctrines — they are evidence-based safeguards grounded in modern medicine.
FFRF notes that efforts to weaken vaccine requirements frequently rely on expansive interpretations of “religious freedom” that distort the First Amendment. While individuals are free to hold religious beliefs that conflict with medical science, the Constitution does not require public institutions to adopt religiously motivated denial of science as public policy.
“When ideology overrides evidence in public institutions, children pay the price,” Gaylor says. “The separation of church and state exists precisely to ensure that public policy is based on reason and the common good — not sectarian belief.”
The organization cautions that dismantling school immunization laws could disproportionately harm vulnerable children, including those who are immunocompromised or too young to be vaccinated.
“Freedom of religion protects belief,” Gaylor adds. “It does not grant a license to impose preventable disease on others.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation will continue monitoring state-level efforts to weaken vaccine requirements and stands ready to defend the constitutional principle that government policy — especially in public schools — must remain neutral, secular and evidence-based.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 42,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
