Ban on vaccine exemption advances
Bill passes in legislature’s public health committee
HARTFORD — State legislators Monday advanced a bill that would prohibit parents in the future from citing religious beliefs as a reason not to vaccinate their school-age children but agreed to grandfather in all children in public and private schools who currently receive religious exemptions from vaccination.
The amended bill passed by a narrow 14-11 vote in the legislature’s public health committee after an extended debate on what has become one of the most controversial issues at the state Capitol this year and has drawn considerable protest. The original bill would have required all students to be up-to-date on their vaccines beginning this fall, including the estimated 7,800 students who receive religious exemptions.
“We have listened to their voices, and we are making them with this amendment,” said Rep. Sean Scanlon, a Guilford Democrat. “I believe in vaccines.”
A crowd of vaccine skeptics returned to the Capitol complex for Monday’s vote after a recordbreaking public hearing last week that stretched for more than 21 hours where hundreds of parents raised concerns about educational
and religious freedoms and argued the proposal trampled on their parental rights. They said the move was not necessary because about 96% of kindergarten students in Connecticut are vaccinated against highly contagious diseases like measles.
But in testimony during last week’s hearings, doctors and health professionals said they were worried by an increasing number of religious exemptions and discounted some parents’ testimony that vaccines posed a health risk to children.
Lawmakers pledged to continue updating and improving the bill in the coming weeks and months as it moves to the floor of the state House of Representatives and Senate before the legislative session is scheduled to end on May 6.
All Republicans on the committee voted against the bill, along with a pair of Democrats. Prior to the vote, Republicans had said the Democratic committee co-chairs were moving too fast on the issue.
Rep. William Petit, a Republican legislator who is one of two physicians on the committee, said he personally believes in vaccinations but urged caution on advancing the legislation.
“The issues are not so much scientific, but socioeconomic, sociopolitical,” Petit told reporters. “If we pass the original bill, as it was written, and push a number of kids out of school, where and how do they get educated? What does it cost to society? If we grandfather kids in, starting from kindergarten on, how do we undercut the argument that there’s some urgency if we allow kids who are creating some risk to be in the system for another 12 years before they are out?
“I think we need to really back off and look at this issue more completely.”
Senate Republican leader Len Fasano, in a written statement after the vote, likewise accused Democrats of moving too quickly on the issue.
“The Democrat leadership of the Public Health Committee ignored over 20 hours of public testimony and the voices of over 5,000 citizens to rush a bill without giving the advocates the courtesy of reviewing last second changes,” he said. “When we still have a month left to continue committee work on the legislation why rush? If there’s going to be an amendment, why not allow for transparency and discussion of that proposal? Why force this through today?”
But supporters said it was imperative for legislators to act, and acknowledged they would open to further changes to the bill.
Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, a Westport Democrat who co-chairs the public health committee, said that the United States is “not as prepared for an epidemic as we might think it is.”
Democratic Sen. Saud Anwar, a physician from South Windsor, said he is a strong supporter of vaccines and voted in favor of advancing the bill. But he said he believed it could still be improved and he wanted to be involved in that process.
“The risk of unvaccinated children is going to increase” if lawmakers do nothing, Anwar said. “It’s happening in other parts of the world.”
Parents and their children descended upon the five-floor Legislative Office Building Monday with some sitting on the floor and others leaning over the railings as they looked down on the huge throng below. They said data cited by the state Department of Public Health at last week’s hearing was flawed and misrepresented the situation in Connecticut.
The group gathered in a prayer circle on the first floor of the building and said the Pledge of Allegiance and the the Lord’s Prayer as legislators met in closed-door caucuses before the committee meeting. The meeting was delayed nearly four hours and finally began shortly before 2:30 p.m.
Deputy House Speaker Jack Hennessy, a Bridgeport Democrat, rallied the protesters outside the Capitol Monday morning and said he opposed grandfathering the children who already have the exemption. Protesters said grandfathering would not help any children in the future who are not yet in school or are not yet born.
Hours later, at the committee meeting, Hennessy asked, “What is the rush? The data is flawed. … Grandfathering is a gratuitous effort to legitimize this bill that cannot be legitimized.”
Deputy House Republican leader Vincent Candelora of North Branford said legislators need to hear the views of the state education commissioner and obtain additional data before voting on such an important bill.
“We are eroding a religious liberty,” he told his colleagues. “I am not comfortable with segregating a minority population in the state. … I think this bill was rushed before us. … I fear that once this moves out of this committee, we lose our voice.”
It will be up to the Democratic leaders in the House and Senate whether the bill is ultimately called for a vote.
House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz of Berlin said he intends to study the issue further.
“To be fair to the public hearing process, quite honestly I don’t know that I’ll watch all 21 hours, but I will watch the lion’s share of the public hearing and make my mind up from there,” Aresimowicz said. “I know on its face, for me, we should go forward with getting rid of the exemption. I understand people’s personal rights, but our job is to ensure the safety of all people.”
He said a vast trove of medical information is available on the internet and leads to “the sharing of information, whether it’s true or not.”
“I, quite honestly, don’t fault the people for fears,” Aresimowicz said. “They genuinely believe them. In every piece of science, that fear might not be justified.”
In the 2018-2019 school year, about 96% of kindergarteners in Connecticut were vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella. But the state Department of Public Health, following a record-breaking measles outbreak last year, has expressed concern about a small, but growing, percentage of religious exemptions that could create pockets of vulnerability to the virus throughout the state.
Between the 2017-18 and 2018-19 school years, the number of kindergarten students with a religious exemption jumped from 2% to 2.5%, a 25% year-overyear increase.
“We’re going in the opposite direction,” state public health Commissioner Renee D. Coleman-Mitchell told legislators at last week’s public hearing. “What’s to say that next year the religious exemptions won’t continue to skyrocket … and we had a chance to prevent that from happening?”