2025/2026 Bills
Learn about the bills we are supporting and opposing this legislative session and take action.
Bills we Support
An Act Relative to Fair Educational Practices
Bill Synopsis: An Act Relative to Fair Educational Practices is a Massachusetts bill that strengthens anti-discrimination laws in education. The bill strengthens anti-discrimination laws in education and adds “special medical status” as a protected category.
This bill is a necessary step toward educational equity, ensuring that students with chronic health conditions, medical needs, or personal health circumstances receive the same protections as others. It promotes fairness, inclusion, and equal educational opportunities for all.
*Bill numbers will change when assigned to a committee.
An Act Prohibiting Harmful Food Dyes in Competitive School Foods
Bill Synopsis: An Act Prohibiting Harmful Food Dyes in Competitive School Foods seeks to prohibit the sale or provision of competitive foods and non-sweetened carbonated water containing certain artificial food dyes (Blue 1, Blue 2, Green 3, Red 3, Red 40, Yellow 5, and Yellow 6) in public schools.
Exceptions allow the sale of these items off school premises, 30 minutes after the school day ends, or during school-related events like booster sales and concession stands.
This bill is a crucial step toward ensuring that all children in Massachusetts have access to safe, nutritious meals in school that support their health and academic success, while still allowing flexibility for extracurricular activities and fundraising efforts.
*Bill numbers will change when assigned to a committee.
An Act Relative to the Protection of Medical Exemptions for Immunizations for School Attendance
Bill Synopsis: An Act Relative to the Protection of Medical Exemptions for Immunizations for School Attendance aims to broaden and clarify the criteria physicians can use when considering medical exemptions for school attendance, allowing them to assess a child’s total health circumstances. This bill would also protect physicians from any professional repercussions for issuing medical exemptions. Additionally, it would preserve existing law regarding religious exemptions to immunization for school attendance.
An Act Relative to the Protection of Medical Exemptions for Immunizations for School Attendance is critical for protecting medical decision-making, physician integrity, and parental rights. It ensures fairness in exemption policies for school-aged children in Massachusetts.
*Bill numbers will change when assigned to a committee.
Bills we Oppose
An Act Relative to Routine Childhood Immunizations & An Act Relative to Vaccines and Preventing Future Disease Outbreaks
Bill Synopsis:
An Act Relative to Routine Childhood Immunizations and its companion bill, An Act Relative to Vaccines Preventing Future Disease Outbreaks, would remove the religious exemption to vaccination, effectively denying in-person schooling to children who desperately need it, including those from communities of color, underprivileged backgrounds, and those with special needs.
Additionally, the bill would require all schools to report immunization and medical exemption data to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. The department would then be required to annually publish and make publicly available aggregate immunization and exemption data for each school and school district.
*Bill numbers will change when assigned to a committee.
An Act Promoting Community Immunity
Committee: Awaiting Committee Assignment
Bill Status: Awaiting Committee Assignment
Current Bill #: SD.2117*
Bill Synopsis: The Community Immunity Act purports to improve and standardize immunization reporting but goes well beyond this reasonable goal. It is complicated, wasteful, and blatantly coercive, not only for students but also for schools and physicians.
Spanning nine pages, key concerns of the bill include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Minors could consent to preventative care, including vaccination, without parental consent or knowledge—regardless of age or mental capacity.
- Private daycares, schools, and colleges could refuse religious exemptions and impose additional vaccines not required by DPH (like COVID-19, HPV).
- Both religious and medical exemptions require annual submission on a DPH-prepared form, subject to state approval.
- DPH would be given expansive authority to change immunization and exemption requirements.
- Doctors would be required to sign religious and medical exemptions that may lead them to dismiss the patient.
- Medical exemptions for medically fragile children could become much more difficult to obtain, as the Act would restrict the criteria a physician could use for a medical exemption to vaccination.
- Schools, daycares, and other educational programs could be designated as “Elevated Risk Programs” if their immunization rates fall below a state-defined threshold for herd immunity. This designation could disproportionately impact minority communities and create a climate of fear, harassment, and discrimination. Additionally, it raises significant privacy concerns, particularly for small schools, as public reporting of immunization rates could lead to unintended targeting of certain institutions.
*Bill numbers will change when assigned to a committee.
An Act Enhancing Access to Abortion
Bill Synopsis: An Act Enhancing Access to Abortion goes beyond abortion-related care by granting minors the ability to consent to all forms of preventative care, including vaccinations, without parental consent or knowledge. It does not include any age delineations or mental capacity guidelines for minors making these decisions.
This bill strips parents of their fundamental right to be involved in critical healthcare decisions affecting their children, potentially exposing minors to medical interventions without adequate oversight or guidance.
*Bill numbers will change when assigned to a committee.
