After years of failed attempts, the Connecticut legislature early Tuesday moved closer to ending the state’s religious exemption for required school vaccines.
The measure, which was the subject of more than 16 hours of debate in the House of Representatives, contained a compromise that would allow students who have existing exemptions to keep them. The final vote in the House came just before 3 a.m. when the measure was approved by a 90-53 margin with seven members absent.
Lawmakers were sharply divided along partisan lines with the Democratic leaders who control the chamber and most rank and file members strongly supporting the bill while Republicans were largely united against it. Ultimately, just seven Democrats voted against the bill and five Republicans supported it.
“This bill is so punitive and such government overreach,” said Rep. Gale Mastrofrancesco, R-Wolcott. “There’s nothing in our Constitution [that] says that the government has the right to force you to put a needle in your arm.”
The GOP filed 50 amendments. Most of them were uncalled, but the debate nevertheless stretched past midnight, even as the bill’s passage in the House was all but assured.
Rep. Tammy Nuccio, a Republican from Tolland, described her opposition to lifting the exemption as rooted in feminism. She expressed concern that women’s careers would be hurt by the requirement that unvaccinated children be barred from public schools.
“As a woman, I am fiercely, fiercely protective over the autonomy to make my own decisions,” Nuccio said. “I am fiercely a proponent of my body, my choice…this extends to my decisions as a parent…nobody gets to have autonomy over my body or my child’s body.”
While Republicans dominated the debate, several Democrats spoke out to defend the bill.
Rep. Charlie Stallworth, a Democrat from Bridgeport and an ordained minister, said he the religious exemption is often “misappropriated” by people who are opposed to immunizations for reasons that have nothing to do with faith.
“I’m for the freedom of religion whatever your religion is,” Stallworth said. But, he added, “if you’re going to use a religious [exemption], you have to a proper norm and a point of departure and a systematic sense to it and not just be able to walk out and say ‘it’s my religion.”’
Few issues have been as contentious and polarizing as the effort to rescind the religious exemption, which has been enshrined in state law since 1959. Earlier this spring, hundreds of protestors gathered at the Capitol to decry the proposal, saying they, not the government, should determine whether their children receive a vaccine.
The overwhelming majority of parents follow the state’s immunization rules but in some pockets of Connecticut, vaccination rates have dipped in recent years, leading some public health experts to worry about herd immunity.
“Good public health policy is by definition proactive not reactive,” said Rep. Jonathan Steinberg of Westport, the co-chairman of the legislature’s pubic health committee. “It’s very, very difficult to head off a highly contagious disease once an actual vector has spread.”
The immunizations required for school entry include vaccines to protect against mumps, measles and other contagious diseases. “It’s not like we have no crisis now…but we’re heading there,” Steinberg said. “It is critically important to have a policy in place…these are not only highly contagious, these are deadly diseases. We used to have four or five hundred people a year die from measles.”
Before the House gaveled in, Speaker Matt Ritter of Hartford predicted the bill would pass “pretty overwhelmingly.” It was the first time a bill addressing the religious exemption had reached the House floor after three contentious years of discussion at the Capitol.
A previous version of the bill called for a “grandfather” clause only for students in seventh grade and above. But a Democratic amendment to include all students in kindergarten and above will increase the vote count in favor of the bill.
As many as half of House Democrats, Ritter said, are disappointed because they wanted to keep the exemption at seventh grade and above. He declined to reveal the precise vote count before the debate.
Ritter and Republicans all agreed that opponents will likely file a civil lawsuit, which could cause uncertainty in the case for years to come.
Connecticut is among 45 states that have some form of religious exemption. If Connecticut changes the law, it would join states such as New York, Maine, California, West Virginia, and Mississippi.
The bill covers required measles, mumps and a host of other vaccinations for students in both public and private schools, along with commercial day care centers and day care in homes. The COVID-19 vaccine is not among the mandated innoculations at this time. (Parents of children who have a compromised immune system or another underlying medical condition that can put them at risk of an adverse outcome from a vaccine could still secure a medical exemption from a physician.)
In addition to approval from the House, the state Senate and Gov. Ned Lamont also must endorse the measure. Lamont, a Democrat, reiterated his support on Monday.
A key point is that students must be already enrolled in school in order to receive the exemption. While the bill is effective in September 2022, students need to have already received the exemption “upon passage” — meaning when Lamont signs the bill.
Only a small percentage of children in Connecticut are not vaccinated, but those numbers have been growing in recent years. About 98% of students in seventh grade and above have been vaccinated, officials said, and only 0.5% of students have medical exemptions, which are separate from religious exemptions.
Rep. Mitch Bolinsky, a Republican from Newtown, said the numbers suggest that the issue has been overblown.
“Twenty children in a class and 19.5 of them will be vaccinated,” he said. “I don’t know what you do about that half a kid that isn’t, but denying families who have made an alternative choice and exercised a religious exemption to the tune of a half of one percent of our school population, that just feels creepy and wrong to me.”
But Democrats who support the bill said it is important to act now, before public health is compromised.
“There is a trend and we need to somehow stop that trend in its tracks to ensure that our public schools are safe environments,” Rep. Michelle Cook of Torrington said.
Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@courant.com
