JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – With several cases of measles recently confirmed in Northeast Florida, including two pediatric patients in Jacksonville, the debate over vaccinations for school-aged children has re-emerged.
Medical professionals almost universally encourage parents to vaccinate their children as early as possible, particularly against vaccine-preventable diseases, like measles and whooping cough.
In Florida, vaccines are currently required for children to attend school, unless their family applies for a religious or medical-based exemption.
Last year, Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo argued against the need for any vaccine requirements for school attendance.
The move was highly criticized within the medical community.
Now, state Sen. Clay Yarborough, R-Jacksonville, wants instead to expand Florida’s vaccine exemptions to allow parents to request “conscience-based” exemptions to school vaccine mandates.
“So the Medical Freedom bill, Senate Bill 1756, that we began moving in the process this week, has three main parts, and it makes great strides to ensure that Florida parents can make educated medical decisions for their school-age children," Yarborough said in a phone interview Tuesday with News4JAX. “Just for clarity, we’re not removing any vaccines, we’re not banning any vaccines. We’re just giving parents the option. Maybe they’re compelled by something other than a religious belief, but they don’t have any other avenue where they could, you know, truthfully file an objection. This conscience-based objection part of the bill would allow them to be able to do that in good faith and register that with the state.”
Yarborough acknowledged that he’s monitoring the situation with the measles cases reported in Northeast Florida, but said he does not believe increasing exemptions for school children will lead to major outbreaks.
He pointed out that as of the end of 2024, 89% of children ages 5 to 17 were considered “fully vaccinated” for MMR.
“Vaccination levels right now appear to be sufficient to prevent sustained transmission, even with exemptions on the books,” Yarborough said. “Certainly, I’m very sensitive to that, with that being our area and being home. But we’re trying to strike that balance with letting parents make the decisions -- because they should be able to do that and have the right to do that -- and still keep the public health broadly in mind as well.”
Yarborough argued that states with lower vaccination rates than Florida, which have allowed conscience-based exemptions, have not seen a surge in measles cases.
“Based on the research I have, I don’t see that that would be the case,” Yarborough said. “Some of these diseases that have been around for a long time, if you vaccinate, you might be able to slow spread and slow some of the transmission, but it’s not a total eradication of a particular illness. But parents need to be the ones to make that decision for their children.”
But according to a 2025 report from the American Academy of Pediatrics, “higher rates of immunization exemptions in communities correlate with higher rates of vaccine-preventable illnesses and disease outbreaks, such as pertussis (whooping cough) and measles.”
The issue, AAP points out, is that “unvaccinated children are often geographically clustered within communities... which results in population clusters within larger communities with significantly lower immunization rates that are insufficient to prevent spread of disease within those communities.”
If a vaccine-preventable disease like measles is introduced in an area with low vaccination rates, the chances are high that an outbreak could occur within that community and then spread beyond that community, AAP warns.
The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials also cited a study showing that children exempt from vaccines were 22.2 times more likely to acquire measles and 5.9 times more likely to acquire whooping cough than vaccinated children.
That study also found that at least 11% of vaccinated children in measles outbreaks acquired infection through contact with a child exempt from vaccinations.
Yarborough said that Florida has a protocol in place to prevent such transmission.
“If there’s an outbreak at a school, then the county health department can declare an emergency and can even exclude from school those who they see on the list don’t have their vaccinations,” Yarborough said. “So there are mechanisms in place under current law that if you had an outbreak, the state and the counties can respond to that and make sure that those children are not there until the declaration is lifted.”
Yarborough said his Medical Freedom bill also includes provisions to prevent the state’s surgeon general from ordering vaccinations and to allow Ivermectin to be sold without a prescription.