West Virginia Reinstates Ban on Religious Exemptions From School Vaccine Requirements

The state’s education board said the reinstated ban ‘will be in effect until the Supreme Court issues further guidance.’

A man gets a vaccine in Buffalo, W.Va., on March 26, 2021. Stephen Zenner/Getty Images

The West Virginia Board of Education on Dec. 2 reinstated its ban on religious exemptions to school vaccine requirements after the state Supreme Court paused a lower court’s ruling that had permitted them.

The board said in a statement that it was reimposing its order to county boards of education “not to accept religious exemptions to compulsory vaccination laws.”

The board in late November had suspended its directive, after West Virginia Circuit Judge Michael Froble ruled that it had substantially burdened the religious exercise of parents who had filed for religious exemptions and filed suit against the board over its stance.

Froble said the policy of not accepting religious exemptions violated a 2023 state religious freedom law and ordered the board and local boards not to enforce its policy against families that have sought—or do seek in the future—religious exemptions to mandated vaccines.

The West Virginia Supreme Court on Dec. 2 stayed Froble’s ruling.

“Upon consideration and review, the Court is of the opinion to, and does, grant the petitioners’ motion to stay. Enforcement of the circuit court’s November 26, 2025, ‘Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law, and Order Granting Permanent Injunction and Declaratory Relief’ and any further proceedings in circuit court are stayed pending resolution of this petition for a writ of prohibition,” the court stated in a 3-page decision.

The West Virginia Board of Education said that the reinstated ban “will be in effect until the Supreme Court issues further guidance.”

West Virginia law requires school students to be vaccinated against chickenpox, Hepatitis B, measles, meningitis, mumps, diphtheria, polio, rubella, tetanus, and whooping cough. The law outlines exemptions for medical reasons, and the board allows those.

West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey had celebrated Froble’s ruling.

In January, he said in an order that state officials have to allow religious exemptions to required vaccines under a 2023 state law that states that state actions may not generally substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion.

“Our office is currently reviewing the order,” a spokesperson for Morrisey told media outlets in a statement. “Whether we prevail in the courts or prevail with the legislature, West Virginia will ultimately join the other 45 states that protect and defend religious liberty and will no longer be such an outlier on vaccine policy.”

West Virginia is one of only five states not to accept vaccine mandate exemptions for nonmedical reasons.

Morrisey has said that while his order means officials have to accept religious exemptions, legislators should pass a statute adding religious exemptions to the state law.