• Do not advance H.2554 out of House Ways and Means.
• Maintain the status quo
• Refer H.2554 to Study.
• Preserve the existing religious exemption.

• Please share your position on this bill. If they share their position, please forward to: responses@healthactionma.org

Key Policy Points

• H.2554 would permanently exclude approximately 1% of Massachusetts children from public and private schools, forcing many families to choose between their religious beliefs and their child’s education.
• Massachusetts ranks first in the nation for childhood vaccination rates.
• Massachusetts has the lowest vaccine hesitancy in the nation.
• Religious exemptions remain low, representing approximately 1% of Massachusetts students.
• According to DPH, many families exercising religious exemptions do so for only one or two vaccines and are otherwise vaccinated.
• DPH data show that students who are not compliant with school vaccination requirements and have no exemption on file outnumber students with religious exemptions by approximately 7 to 1.
• Non-compliance—not religious exemptions—is the primary driver of pockets of lower vaccination rates, yet H.2554 targets a small number of families of faith who have been following the law.
• Many schools reporting lower vaccination rates have few or no religious exemptions, suggesting that non-compliance, record-transfer issues, and access barriers are the primary drivers.
• Removing the exemption is unlikely to meaningfully increase statewide vaccination rates because religious exemptions account for only about 1% of students.
• Vaccination rates have increased over the last 30 years.
• There has been no uptick in vaccine-preventable diseases in the last ten years. 

Educational Access and Student Impact

• H.2554 would permanently exclude approximately 1% of Massachusetts children from in-person education.
• The bill is likely to have a limited impact on overall statewide vaccination rates, a 1% increase at best, while carrying significant educational and social consequences for affected families.
• Children with disabilities, special needs, IEPs/504 plans, and families with limited educational alternatives would be disproportionately affected, removing access to critical services and education plans.
• Students from low-income and underserved communities could lose access to school-based meals, counseling, mental health services, and other critical supports.
• Excluding students from school does not remove them from the broader community, raising questions about whether the educational harms of permanent exclusion outweigh any additional public health benefit.
• Massachusetts students continue to face learning recovery challenges and a youth mental health crisis. Public policy should focus on keeping children in school, not pushing them out.
• Permanent exclusion from school can result in significant educational, social, health, and economic harms.
• H.2554 could force families to choose between their religious beliefs and their child’s access to education.
• Massachusetts has invested billions through the Student Opportunity Act to expand educational opportunity and close achievement gaps. H.2554 moves in the opposite direction by excluding some children from school altogether.

Public Health and Existing Safeguards

• Massachusetts has successfully balanced religious freedom and public health protections for decades.
• Existing laws protect against the spread of infection by allowing the religious exemption to be suspended and students to be excluded from school during an outbreak.
• Existing and effective exclusion and outbreak-response protocols protect public health without permanently excluding children from school.
• H.2554 represents a major policy change despite Massachusetts already maintaining the highest school vaccination rates in the country.
• Public health efforts should be focused on supporting the much larger non-compliant population rather than excluding students with religious exemptions.

Fiscal, Legal and Constitutional Concerns

• H.2554 is likely to trigger immediate, costly, and prolonged litigation.

• H.2554 raises significant constitutional and religious liberty concerns under both the Massachusetts and U.S. Constitutions.

• Recent U.S. Supreme Court and Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decisions strengthening protections for religious exercise suggest that eliminating the religious exemption could violate the Free Exercise Clause and trigger costly litigation.

• School districts could lose funding tied to enrollment if students are forced out of school.

Better Alternatives

• Public health policy should continue to focus on proven strategies—supporting school nurses, improving follow-up, and expanding education and access—while prioritizing outreach to the larger group of students who are not in compliance, rather than permanently excluding a small number of families of faith who have been following the law.
• Outreach, education, and access have a stronger track record than exclusionary policies and coercive measures.