The Trump administration is telling state health departments that vaccine administrators need to comply with religious and conscience exemptions to immunization mandates.
The HHS Office for Civil Rights Thursday issued a letter to participants in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vaccines for Children Program.
According to the letter, VCP immunization providers—who offer Medicaid-eligible, underinsured, and other eligible people shots free of charge or at low cost—need to consider religious freedom exemptions to vaccine requirements even if a state law doesn’t explicitly include those exemptions.
“State religious freedom statutes should especially be considered when compulsory vaccination statutes expressly provide ...