Florida pushes to end vaccine mandates. What doctors say parents should know
For years, Florida has required students to get vaccinated against measles, polio and other highly contagious diseases to attend school.
But Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced this week that they want the state to roll back all of its vaccine mandates. They say parents should have the power to decide what vaccines, if any, their child should get.
Doctors and infectious disease experts told the Miami Herald they’re concerned the health policy shift will lead to a comeback of diseases that have mostly disappeared due to effective and safe vaccination strategies. More people falling sick will lead to more people calling off work, either because they themselves are sick or because they need to care for an infected loved one, which could impact the economy, health experts say.
The U.S., which has seen a nationwide dip in childhood immunizations in recent years, has already seen over 1,400 cases of highly contagious measles this year, the most reported since the disease was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000. Six of the measles cases were recorded in Florida, including one in Miami-Dade and two in Broward County, federal data shows.
“I absolutely understand wanting to have ownership over your child’s health,” said Jason Salemi, an epidemiology professor at the University of South Florida College of Public Health in Tampa, and also the father of a young child. “The challenge is that some diseases like measles are so contagious that one family’s decision not to vaccinate can put many other children at risk.”
“Mandates may change, but the science doesn’t,” Salemi added, noting that “vaccines are still among the safest ways and most effective ways to protect your child from serious disease.”
Here’s what to know:
What vaccines does Florida currently require for school?
Florida requires kids to get vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), polio, measles, mumps, rubella, varicella (chickenpox), Hib infections like meningitis, pneumococcal disease and Hepatitis B.
Children have traditionally needed these shots in order to attend daycare, preschool, and public, private and charter schools.
The vaccines are spaced out by age and grade level. Kids can skip the shots if their parents cite medical and religious reasons.
Can Florida actually make all school vaccines optional?
States have constitutional authority to decide “health policing and health policy,” said Dr. Aileen Marty, an infectious disease expert at Florida International University. That means Florida can loosen or tighten its vaccination requirements. But DeSantis and Ladapo can’t decide to make all of the vaccines optional by themselves.
Some of the mandatory shots that kids need for school are named in Florida law, including those for polio, diphtheria, rubeola, rubella, pertussis, mumps, and tetanus. The state’s health department is also allowed under Florida law to require vaccination for other contagious diseases.
That means the state legislature would need to get involved to entirely remove vaccine mandates in Florida, according to reporting by the Herald/Tampa Bay Times.
However, there are four vaccines the state requires kids to get that are not specifically mentioned in state law: those for Varicella, or chickenpox; Hepatitis B; Haemophilus influenzae type b, or Hib; and Pneumococcal conjugate, or PCV15/20. The state health department says it can and will make those shots optional almost immediately.
Katie Young, a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Health, also told Times/Herald reporters that the department will expand an exemption that allows families to opt out of the shots based on their personally held beliefs.
What do medical experts say?
Florida’s push to make vaccinations optional is raising alarm bells in the minds of doctors and public health experts who spoke with the Herald. They say it will lead to fewer kids getting fully vaccinated and, in turn, more disease outbreaks.
“Over time, some of these germs will once again find themselves in Florida and spread to and among unvaccinated children, and there will be more illness,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. “If there are more illnesses, there’ll be more hospitalizations and occasional deaths, and that is as predictable as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.”
Doctors are worried parents won’t keep up with vaccination schedules if shots become optional. Some might skip the shots all together. Some doctors might not even immediately recognize symptoms in a sick patient because vaccines have made many contagious diseases rare in this country, said Marty, the FIU expert.
The Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics told the Herald it’s concerned the move away from mandatory school vaccinations “will put children in Florida public schools at higher risk for getting sick, which will have a ripple effect across our communities.”
Another issue: Florida making certain vaccines optional could make it harder for some parents to vaccinate their child, doctors say.
Doctors can administer vaccines that are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and are also recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and approved by the CDC director. But if states don’t mandate the shots, there’s “no requirement to give away free vaccines” to people without health insurance, said Marty.
Vaccines recommended by the CDC’s advisory committee are usually covered by health insurers, including health insurance obtained through an employer, through Medicaid and through the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Children who are uninsured or underinsured also have access to free vaccines through the Vaccines for Children program, a federal program that works with states to provide free vaccines, often through health department offices and federally qualified health centers.
Why does Florida want to make vaccines optional?
Ladapo and the DeSantis administration have opposed COVID-19 vaccines and masks for a long time, often putting themselves at odds with top federal health officials. Ladapo has recommended against healthy children getting COVID shots, a stance that was not supported by top federal health officials until President Donald Trump tapped Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a known vaccine skeptic, to become secretary of U.S. Health and Human Services.
Florida banned COVID vaccine mandates in 2021. Now, it’s seeking to end all vaccine mandates, which Ladapo compared to “slavery.”
“Who am I as a man standing here now to tell you what you should put in your body?” Ladapo said during a Wednesday news conference.
Schaffner, the Vanderbilt expert, said the policy shift makes Florida the first state to step away from what once appeared to be a unified decision in the country by lawmakers — that all children should be vaccinated to attend school as part of a nationwide effort to reduce the spread of highly contagious and often deadly diseases.
It comes at a time when Florida, like the rest of the nation, has seen a continuous decline in routine childhood immunizations as vaccine hesitancy is on the rise and myths and misinformation continue to circulate. In Florida, religious exemptions have ticked up slightly, while exemptions for medical conditions have remained steady over the past several years.
“We should not be turning back the clock,” said Schaffner, noting that the country has several rules in place to protect everyone. Child labor laws exist. Kids are required to attend school. And people are required to wear seatbelts in the car, he said.
Similarly, everyone has a responsibility “not [just] to our own children but to those other frail children in our communities,” he said, including kids undergoing treatment for cancer or other conditions that make them immunocompromised. “We all share that responsibility, and we fulfill it by having our children vaccinated, not only for their own protection but for the protection” of other children in the community, he said.
What should parents do?
Every doctor and infectious disease expert the Herald spoke with said they recommend that parents vaccinate their kids to help protect everyone. They also recommend parents speak with their child’s pediatrician about vaccination.
“Diseases don’t go away just because the rules change,” said Salemi, noting that decades of evidence shows that “when vaccine rules are loosened, coverage goes down and outbreaks go up.”
This story was originally published September 4, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
