Florida moves to end vaccine mandates for schoolchildren

A tray contains Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines at a vaccination event in Miami on May 17, 2021. (Saul Martinez/The New York Times)

By PATRICIA MAZZEI

Florida plans to become the first state to end all vaccine mandates, including for schoolchildren, rejecting a practice that public health experts have credited for decades with limiting the spread of infectious diseases.

Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general, made the announcement Wednesday alongside Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican. DeSantis rose to national prominence during the coronavirus pandemic, and over time he has espoused increasingly anti-vaccine views.

“Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body?” Ladapo, a vocal denigrator of vaccines, said to applause during an event Wednesday in Valrico, Florida, near Tampa. “Your body is a gift from God.”

He added that the administration would be “working to end” all vaccine mandates. “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” Ladapo said, without elaborating.

The announcement comes as the anti-vaccine stance of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s health secretary, is causing tumult across federal public health agencies. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in particular, has been engulfed in turmoil as the Trump administration has ousted experts, in some cases replacing them with people who align with Kennedy’s views.

Ladapo has faced repeated criticism from others in his field for his stances on public health. He allowed parents to choose whether to send unvaccinated children to school during a measles outbreak in Weston, Florida, in 2024, rejecting long-standing, evidence-based public health guidelines. The misinformation he spread about COVID vaccines prompted a public rebuke from the CDC in 2023.

It is unclear what the process of undoing the state’s long-standing vaccine mandates might look like. But state legislatures are typically involved in setting vaccine requirements for schoolchildren; the federal government approves vaccines for the public and issues guidance on who should get them.

Ladapo said the Florida Department of Health, the agency he oversees, would do away with rules on vaccine mandates. The agency’s rulemaking authority is laid out in a state statute that requires certain immunizations for schoolchildren.

State lawmakers “are going to have to make decisions,” Ladapo said. “That’s how this becomes possible.”

Republican legislative leaders in Florida did not immediately comment on the announcement, but Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a Republican who chairs the U.S. Senate’s health committee, called the move by DeSantis and Ladapo “a terrible thing for public health.”

“We’re going to start having vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks at school,” Cassidy, a physician, said, adding that “you’re going to have children who come to school with measles and infect other people who either have not been vaccinated or have some sort of disease, like cancer.”

All 50 states have at least some vaccination requirements for children entering school, though all allow for medical exemptions, and most allow exemptions for religious or personal reasons. The number of students receiving exemptions has been increasing in recent years, and immunization rates have been falling, according to KFF, a health policy research group.

Up to now, the DeSantis administration has focused its anti-vaccine efforts on COVID-19 vaccines; Florida bans COVID-19 vaccine mandates for students and has broadly prohibited so-called vaccine passports, which show proof of immunization. But the state has long required most children entering school to be vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella; chickenpox; and hepatitis B, among other infectious diseases.

Dr. Lisa Gwynn, a pediatrician in Miami and past president of the Florida chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, dismissed the argument from Ladapo and other DeSantis administration officials that vaccination decisions should be solely in parents’ hands.

“It’s more than just the decision of a parent,” she said. “It’s about the elderly; it’s about the vulnerable, the immunologically challenged, and how does this impact our society, our community, our neighbors, our relatives.”

Florida has one of the nation’s largest population of older people, having attracted retirees for generations.

DeSantis, who appointed Ladapo as surgeon general in 2021, also announced the creation of a commission to align Florida with goals laid out by Kennedy. The commission will be headed by Casey DeSantis, the governor’s wife.

“We’ve already done a lot,” Ron DeSantis said. “I don’t think any state has come even close to what Florida has done.”

But, he added, “we want to stay ahead of the curve.”