Recent filing signals movement in West Virginia Supreme Court case over school vaccines

The West Virginia Board of Education and Raleigh County Board of Education filed a response last week in the state Supreme Court of Appeals in a case that could permanently change the state’s school vaccine policies.

The justices of the 2026 West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals are pictured in this photo sourced from the state judiciary's website. Seated from left to right: William (Bill) R. Wooton, Thomas H. Ewing, Chief Justice C. Haley Bunn, Gerald M. Titus, III, and Charles S. Trump, IV.

Robert Fields | WVOW News

CHARLESTON Education officials are challenging a permanent injunction from November issued by Raleigh County Circuit Court Judge Michael Froble, granting parents the ability to enroll their children in classes without meeting requirements laid out by the state’s school vaccination law. In the brief filed on Thursday in the state Supreme Court, board members say West Virginia’s vaccine requirements have “served as a bulwark against disease.” According to the brief, “West Virginia’s school children have the highest vaccination rate in the country and the State experiences few outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases as a result.”

The Legislature has repeatedly considered adding religious exemptions to the Vaccine Law. Each proposal of that nature has failed, and education officials assert that that’s a good thing. The brief cites the recent proliferation of measles in states like South Carolina, Utah and Texas after having previously been considered eliminated in the United States thanks to vaccination requirements.

The case centers on whether the Equal Protection for Religion Act allows exemptions from West Virginia’s longstanding school vaccination requirements. The Supreme Court previously ordered a stay of the lower court ruling and further circuit court proceedings in December, leaving the vaccination rules in place while the appeal moves forward.

The respondents arguing in favor of religious exemptions to vaccine requirements have until May 11 to file their brief. Once that brief is submitted, education officials arguing in favor of the state’s current vaccine requirement will then have 20 days to file a reply brief.

Jared Hunt, Communications Director for the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, says several motions have been filed by individual outside groups to submit amicus, or friend of the court, briefs to the court. Parties have 10 days from the motion to oppose an amicus submission.

PHOTO | West Virginia Judiciary