Gov. Jerry Brown signs bill requiring childhood vaccinations

Kimberly McCauley, a foe of the vaccine measure, holds a photo of her daughter, Ella, after what McCauley says was a bad reaction to a vaccine. Kimberly McCauley, a foe of the vaccine measure, holds a photo of her daughter, Ella, after what McCauley says was a bad reaction to a vaccine. Photo: Rich Pedroncelli, Associated Press Photo: Rich Pedroncelli, Associated Press Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Gov. Jerry Brown signs bill requiring childhood vaccinations 1 / 4 Back to Gallery

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Tuesday that will make California one of the strictest states in requiring children to be vaccinated before attending public and private schools or day care, beginning in January.

The state will stop offering personal- or religious-belief exemptions for school vaccines next year, when California joins just two other states in allowing only medical exemptions signed by a doctor.

Brown signed SB277 less than 24 hours after the bill landed on his desk, prompting supporters to turn their Tuesday news conference into a victory rally instead of a meeting to urge the governor to sign the legislation.

“The science is clear that vaccines dramatically protect children against a number of infectious and dangerous diseases,” Brown wrote in a signing message with the bill. “While it’s true that no medical intervention is without risk, the evidence shows that immunization powerfully benefits and protects the community.”

Noting the “considerable debate” in the Legislature about the vaccine mandate, Brown called attention to an amendment of the new law that will allow children to receive a medical exemption from a doctor. In addition to medical exemptions for children who cannot be safely vaccinated, doctors can also consider family medical history — such as a sibling’s adverse reaction to a vaccine. Many of the thousands of parents who lined Capitol hallways to express their opposition to the bill had said medical exemptions were too difficult to obtain from their doctors and that the legislation would unfairly force them to homeschool.

Brown did not buy that argument.

“SB277, while requiring that schoolchildren be vaccinated, explicitly provides an exception when a physician believes that circumstances — in the judgment and sound discretion of the physician — so warrant,” Brown wrote.

Under the new law, California joins Mississippi and West Virginia as the only states that do not allow personal or religious exemptions. As before, California families will still be allowed to enroll their children in school if they have not completed their vaccinations but intend to do so.

Parents who choose not to vaccinate their children will have to homeschool or enroll them in an off-campus independent study program.

“We’re surprised and we’re disappointed,” said Monica Sokoloski, vice president of the opposition group Our Kids Our Choice. “At the same time, we’re going to continue to fight this. We don’t have everything hammered out yet on how. This happened so quickly.”

California requires public- and private-school students to be vaccinated against 10 diseases — including measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, chicken pox, hepatitis B and diphtheria — before entering kindergarten. The new law will allow unvaccinated children enrolled in school or day care who already have a personal-belief exemption to continue attending until their next scheduled vaccine check. Such checks occur in kindergarten, seventh grade or when entering a new school.

Students with disabilities will be exempt from the new law if their Individualized Education Program calls for on-campus services.

Bill co-authors state Sens. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, and Ben Allen, D-Santa Monica, said they introduced the bill in response to a measles outbreak that started at Disneyland in December. More than 100 people in California were infected, and the disease spread to other states.

Public health officials say immunization rates need to be high — at least 90 percent of the population — to prevent the spread of diseases and protect individuals who can’t receive vaccines because of age or illness.

This past school year, parents filed 13,592 personal-belief exceptions for California kindergartners, or 2.5 percent of the total kindergarten population, according to the California Department of Public Health. Some children were given conditional entry when a vaccine was not yet due, making the total vaccination rate 90.4 percent of the 535,332 students enrolled in kindergartens across the state.

However, certain areas of the state have much lower rates of immunization than California as a whole. Marin County has the highest rate of personal-belief exemptions in the Bay Area, with 6.5 percent of children having entered school without all of the required vaccinations.

“Throughout our state, our people know that vaccines are safe and vaccines save lives,” said Pan, who is a pediatrician. “The science is clear. Californians have spoken, the governor and the Legislature have spoken. No more preventable contagions, no more outbreaks, no more hospitalizations, no more deaths and no more fear. SB277 is now the law.”

The bill’s signing caps months of debate that at times turned vitriolic. Pan reported he received a death threat, and Allen said one of his staffers did, as well. Several lawmakers reported receiving threatening online posts from opponents of the bill.

Hearings in the Capitol were filled with angry parents who wanted lawmakers to see the children they said the bill would harm. Their opposition centered on a belief that because there are risks to vaccines, the decision should remain up to the parents. Others cited a discredited study that said vaccines cause autism.

“I think it’s difficult for people who are outside the Capitol to know the pressure that was applied on members of the Legislature, the difficult conversations that were had, the fear,” Allen said. “I respect the many, many people on the other side of the debate who conducted themselves in a civil manner. Not everyone did.”

Melody Gutierrez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: mgutierrez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @MelodyGutierrez