With a single dissenting vote from Republican senator Joel Anderson, California’s contentious mandatory vaccination bill passed another legislative milestone on Tuesday – almost ensuring it will make it to a full vote of the state senate in coming weeks.



Senate Bill 277, which will require children in both public and private school to be vaccinated as a condition of on-campus attendance, cleared the senate judicial committee by a vote of 5-1 on Tuesday during a packed hearing where more than 300 opponents, including Mixed Martial Arts champion Urijah Faber, testified against the proposed law.

The bill held two key changes that enabled it to clear the committee, which focused on the constitutionality and legality of the measure. The first change holds the mandated vaccinations to the 10 currently required under existing guidelines, including the MMR, but provides the option of a personal belief exemption for any new vaccinations added to the list in coming years. That is especially critical to some opponents who fear the list will continue to grow if pharmaceutical companies lobby to have new vaccines, including the HPV vaccine Gardasil, added to the required list.

Noelle Foster of Sacramento with her seven-month-old son attended the hearing to oppose SB277, saying she believes the bill is ‘inherently discriminatory and segregational’. Photograph: Anita Chabria

The second change to the proposal would “grandfather” in children currently in the school system, allowing them to potentially circumvent the law if it does pass and go into effect in 2016. Currently, school districts check the vaccination requirements for children entering kindergarten, and again for those entering seventh grade. The new amendment would allow children past kindergarten but before seventh grade, and those kids eighth grade and above, to avoid additional scrutiny of their vaccination records. In effect, children already in the system would not need to deal with the new law until and unless they hit one of the existing checkpoints.

The rowdy hearing lasted more than three hours, and hundreds of opponents of the measure – many with children in tow – voiced their dissent, with half as many testifying in support.

Uriah Faber, a bantamweight champion fighter with the nickname “the California kid”, said that he attended the hearing because he “was raised in a very healthy and unvaccinated environment” with his sister and brother and believed that “everybody should have the opportunity to make a choice”.

Others voiced concern that the bill did not include any religious exemptions. Pastor John Everstson of West Valley Baptist church in Woodland, California, said: “We believe that God places the primary responsibility of our children squarely on the shoulders of parents in these types of situations,” and objected to the fact that religious schools would be subject to the new law.

However, proponents of the measure stressed that other states such as West Virginia have similar measures, without religious exemptions, that have been deemed legal.

“A religious exemption is not required and is a bad idea,” said University of California Hastings law professor Dorit Reiss, testifying in favor of the bill. She pointed out that many people would use such an exemption falsely. “It basically gives people an incentive to say their reasons are religious even when they’re not,” she said.

Senator Anderson, who sparred with committee chair Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson, alluded to concerns both about the availability of medical exemptions – the only way to avoid the mandatory vaccinations if the bill passes – as well as the religious issues. “I think this is a very dangerous road we are gambling on and that’s why so many parents are upset,” he said before voting against the measure, adding that negative effects from vaccines are “a very slim risk, but a risk all the same”.

However, Senator Richard Pan, the bill’s co-author with Senator Ben Allen, countered that “vaccines are one of the greatest health achievements of mankind”, and that declining rates of vaccinations in California that possibly led to incidents like the recent outbreak of measles traced to Disneyland are “proof of why SB277 is necessary”.

The bill will go before the senate appropriations committee next to examine its fiscal impact on the state budget.