Federal Judge Rules Mississippi Must Allow Religious Exemptions for School Vaccines

LifeSite News ^ | 4/26/23 | Matt Lamb

[marshmallow]

District Judge Halil "Sul" Ozerden's ruling leaves only five states that mandate shots without religious exemptions on kids.

GULFPORT, Mississippi (LifeSiteNews) — Mississippi officials must allow students to obtain religious exemptions from vaccine mandates, a federal judge ruled recently.

The southern state had remained one of only two red states that did not offer religious exemptions from school shot mandates. The other is West Virginia.

District Judge Halil “Sul” Ozerden ruled on April 18 that the state’s health officer and a handful of local school district officials were “enjoined from enforcing Mississippi’s school compulsory vaccination law…unless they provide an option for requesting a religious exemption from the law’s requirements.” Plaintiffs were represented by the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), a medical freedom advocacy group.

State Health Officer Daniel Edney has until July 15, according to the ruling, to develop a statewide exemption process for the school shot mandates. “Thereafter, while the injunction remains in effect, a person may seek a religious exemption from the compulsory vaccine law by requesting such exemption pursuant to the process developed by the Mississippi State Department of Health.”

While the plaintiffs were parents, state officials themselves even argued there were exemptions from the mandates, even if those were not explicitly in the state code.

The state argued that another law, the Mississippi Religious Freedom Restoration Act, effectively provided an avenue for requesting an exemption based on religious grounds from vaccine mandates. “The Attorney General takes the position that the MRFRA requires the [state health department] and local school authorities to afford Plaintiffs’ minor children the option of requesting a religious exemption from the vaccination statute,” the judge wrote, summarizing the defendant’s position.

Judge Ozerden did not buy this argument, writing that “the plain text of the statute says nothing about automatically creating religious exemptions to.......

[metmom]

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