In Guzman v. West Virginia Board of Education, (WV Cir. Ct., Nov. 26, 2025), a West Virginia state trial court, in a 75-page opinion, held that the state's Equal Protection of Religion Law enacted in 2023 requires schools to allow children with religious objections to vaccinations to attend school even though the state's Compulsory Vaccination Law (CVL) provides only for medical exemptions. In 2025, the Governor issued an Executive Order instructing the Health Department to create a religious exemption process. However, schools, pursuant to a policy adopted by the State Board of Education, refuse to recognize religious exemption certificates issued by the Health Department. The court said in part:
Collectively, the Court finds the aggregation of individual behaviors the government permits..., to include without limitation, medical exemptions; students who are permitted to attend school on a daily basis while willfully out of compliance with the CVL; teachers, coaches, and staff who are not subject to the CVL; the learning pod, homeschool, and microschool option for unvaccinated children; and members of the general public who have not received vaccines required under the law but who regularly intermingle on school campuses and mass gatherings throughout the State—pose a greater threat to West Virginia’s claimed goals than would permitting Plaintiffs ’children to attend school with a religious exemption.
These other activities “produc[e] substantial harm” to the protection of the health and safety of the public, which Defendants assert is their compelling interest....
Considering these factors, Defendants have failed to demonstrate that “the protection of the health and safety of the public” will be undermined in any material way by granting religious exemptions, particularly given the bevy of comparable activity that the state permits. Thus, the Court determines that requiring these children to be vaccinated is not “essential”—within the meaning of W. Va. Code § 35-1A-1(a)(1)—“to further a compelling governmental interest,” with that interest here being the protection of the health and safety of the public....
Having considered the full record before it, the Court also concludes that Defendants have failed to satisfy the least restrictive means test....
Defendants cannot satisfy this standard given that forty-five states with a religious exemption process deploy a variety of alternative tactics, such as quarantine in the event of an outbreak, temporary exclusion from school, and other measures to effectively control vaccine preventable diseases while simultaneously respecting religious freedoms....
West Virginia Watch reports on the decision.
