The Arkansas News Bureau yesterday published an interesting, and perhaps troubling, follow-up to an Establishment Clause victory in Arkansas over school immunization policy. Before 2003, parents or legal guardians seeking a waiver to keep a child from receiving immunization could do so only on religious or medical grounds. To satisfy the religious exception, parents had to be members of a recognized church. In 2002, in Boone v. Boozman, 217 F. Sup. 2d 938 [LEXIS link], the federal district court found the singling out in the statute of recognized churches for preferential treatment violated the establishment and free exercises clauses of the First Amendment.
In response to this, the Arkansas legislature joined 16 other states to add "philosophical reasons" to the statute as a basis for excusal from immunization. That has led to an almost doubling of the number of children who have been granted immunization waivers in Arkansas. During the 2004-05 school year, 100 students obtained medical waivers, 366 obtained a waiver on religious grounds, and 731 obtained a waiver for philosophical reasons. Most of the children are concentrated in six counties in the northwest part of the state.
State health officials now fear that this will lead to an outbreak of preventable diseases in the state. "We will see an outbreak," said Dr. Sandra Snow, medical director for the state Department of Health's Communicable Disease/Immunization Program. "The question is how many years is it going to be before it hits."
