Every state, along with Washington, D.C., requires children to obtain certain vaccinations before they can attend school or childcare. These mandates date back decades, and many public health experts consider them a foundational defense against infectious disease.
Since the summer of 2025, Florida leaders have aimed to make the state the first to drop some of those vaccine mandates. The anti-vaccine rhetoric has often been positioned as a push for “medical freedom.” Related efforts to revise laws and regulations rumbled along at the state health department and in the legislature for months.
But by the end of April, the fight seemed to have stalled out.
In the opening minutes of a special session on April 28, the Republican speaker of the Florida House, Daniel Perez, refused to bring the vaccine issue to the floor.
“There is some concern here, on my behalf, about children being in school without measles, mumps, polio, and chickenpox vaccines that have been working for decades,” Perez told reporters afterward.
For now, at least, the push to end childhood vaccine mandates has failed in Florida, and that outcome could offer insights into such efforts’ chances in other states. An Associated Press analysis found that at least 350 anti-vaccine bills were introduced in state legislatures last year. Many focused on relaxing requirements for vaccines in schools.
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Last September, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida …