Vaccine skeptics notched another win on Monday: The U.S. Supreme Court overruled a New York’s court decision that had required all school students, in both public and private schools, to be vaccinated with no exemptions for religious beliefs.
In sending the case back to the Second Circuit, the Supreme Court specifically cited that it needed to be reconsidered “in light of” Mahmoud v. Taylor, a case decided earlier this year that allows public school students to opt out of curricula that use books with LGBTQ+ themes because of their religious beliefs.
“The Court has ‘long recognized the rights of parents to direct ‘the religious upbringing’ of their children,” read the majority opinion in that case, written by Justice Samuel Alito. “Those rights are violated by government policies that ‘substantially interfer[e] with the religious development’ of children.”
The Supreme Court didn’t offer any reasoning to send back the New York case beyond its citation of Mahmoud. But it didn’t have to. The court’s move comes at a time when parental rights arguments have begun seeping into public health policy — a favorite conservative stalking horse that has long been used to attack schools. While parental rights arguments have long been part of the anti-vax movement as well, the two versions have begun coming back together in some increasingly ominous ways as the conservative playbook evolves.
Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it was investigating an unnamed school in the Midwest for allegedly illegally vaccinating a child who had a religious exemption on file. The details surrounding the claims are unclear, as HHS did not disclose the names of the school or student nor its precise location. The news also came with a Dear Colleague letter to pediatricians, reminding them about privacy laws.
“Today, we are putting pediatric medical professionals on notice: you cannot sideline parents,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement. “When providers ignore parental consent, violate exemptions to vaccine mandates, or keep parents in the dark about their children’s care, we will act decisively. We will use every tool at our disposal to protect families and restore accountability.”
Parental rights, often in the context of their right to raise their children in accordance with their religious beliefs, has been the rationale for many of the culture war battles being waged by the right. Proponents of the parental rights movement frame the ideology as the freedom to make decisions about their children without interference from government or any other institutions. But in reality, their fight and the legal pressures they bring to schools has often meant shoehorning their belief system onto all kids, not just their own.
Because it is expensive and time-consuming to create a unique plan or policy for every student whose parents object to, say, reading books with LGBTQ+ characters, schools are incentivized to create policies that appease the objecting parents — and then apply it to all students.
Conservative parents and activists have used this strategy to justify undermining public education, excluding LGBTQ+ students from sports and the community from public life, and eliminating diversity programs that promote equality and understanding.
Anti-vaccine rhetoric often sounds very similar to parental rights claims: Many of those who oppose vaccine requirements suggest that vaccines are a personal choice, point to parents who are uncomfortable with the number or frequency of vaccinations, and suggest that parents and not doctors should have the final say on vaccines.
Vaccine skeptics have used those kinds of arguments to undermine vaccine guidelines and, where they exist, vaccine mandates for participation in public services like schools and social events.
Parental rights became more mainstream when the coronavirus pandemic forced schools to shutter their doors and the COVID-19 vaccine became a requirement to resuming normal life: Much like the school culture wars were fueled by coronavirus-related school closures, the pandemic also supercharged anti-vaccine sentiments around the country. Misinformation about disease itself and the efficacy of the vaccine spread like wildfire. Rumors about a rushed timeline or a lack of testing proliferated, making some parents skeptical that the vaccine was better than just risking illness.
“COVID-19 had a spillover effect,” Matt Motta, a health law and policy professor at Boston University’s school of public health, told HuffPost. “The way they felt about that vaccine now shapes the way they feel about vaccines for kids, adults, and even pets.”
And HHS gave anti-vaccine parental rights advocates another boost last week.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which is now stacked with vaccine skeptics, decided on Friday to change the recommendation for when newborn babies get the vaccine against hepatitis B, voting 8-3 to recommend parents weigh the risks before deciding and suggest they wait until the child is 2 months old to get the shot. Before Friday’s vote, the CDC recommended the vaccine for all newborns within 24 hours of being born, as they can be exposed during labor or from another family member who may not even know they’ve been infected.
Hepatitis B attacks the liver and can lead to chronic illness, cancer or even death in babies, young children and adults. According to the University of Minnesota’s Vaccine Integrity Project, 90% of babies born to an infected parent will develop a chronic infection. A quarter of those babies will die prematurely.
Public health experts have repeatedly said there is no evidence to support delaying the hepatitis B vaccine for newborns. But members of the committee have framed the change around parental rights.
When pressed, Robert Malone, a member of the group, told The Associated Press that the change was necessary because of parents who are “uncomfortable with this medical procedure being performed at birth in a rather unilateral fashion without significant informed consent.”
But the CDC does not issue mandates; its recommendations are guidance for states, pediatricians and health insurers to use. Parents have always been able to decide which vaccines to get for their child.
“It’s a misrepresentation of how the choice of vaccine policy even works,” said Kevin Griffis, the spokesperson for the Vaccine Integrity Project, an organization that aims to provide clear and scientific information about vaccines. “And it’s being misrepresented because the goal is to make it harder to get vaccines and to sow doubt about the efficacy of vaccines.”
To public health experts, these types of announcements and changes at the federal level are signaling a clear message. Instead of trusting your pediatrician and the science, “They’re trying to shift the focus to your rights as parents,” Wilbur Chen, an infectious disease doctor and a medical professor at University of Maryland America, told HuffPost.
“This is all in an effort of trying to break down our public trust,” Chen said.
Using parental rights arguments to justify an anti-vax agenda is more proof that right-wingers see this as a winning strategy. As conservative culture warriors continue to push to make public life more aligned with their world view, the versatility of parental rights may make it an appealing blueprint on which to base the next culture war fight.
Because much like the way the push for parental rights in schools impacts not just the students whose parents object to certain curriculum, but their classmates as well, the notion of parental choice when it comes to vaccines will spread far beyond a single unvaccinated child.
“Even if you vaccinate your children, your children will be going to school with other children who are unvaccinated,” Chen said. “You will be sending your kids out there to a world that’s less safe overall.”
Thanks to vaccine misinformation fueled by lawmakers and other public figures, childhood vaccination rates have been falling since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Polling suggests that parents are feeling uncertain about the safety of vaccines. A September 2025 Washington Post-KFF Poll found that 41% of respondents weren’t sure if chronic illnesses were on the rise because of vaccines, and 48% of parents were uncertain if the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, or MMR, can cause autism, a conspiracy theory that has been thoroughly debunked. Scientific consensus has not found any evidence that vaccines cause autism or chronic illnesses.
A measles outbreak that began in Texas in January and spread to other southwestern states, sickened more than 1,000 people and claimed the lives of two children and one adult ― the first measles deaths since 2015. All of the victims were unvaccinated. The illness usually manifests as a rash and high fever.
In Kentucky, an outbreak of pertussis, commonly known as whooping cough, has killed three infants this year — neither the babies nor their mothers had been vaccinated against the disease.
As distrust in public health agencies increased, lawmakers introduced hundreds of bills targeting vaccine mandates, and the country’s partisan divide on vaccines and science grew.
Then the country’s most prominent vaccine skeptic was tapped to lead all of the federal public health agencies: Before becoming the nation’s top public health expert earlier this year, Kennedy Jr. was known as a staunch vaccine critic, falsely claiming that they cause autism. And when Donald Trump won the election last year and announced he would be nominating RFK Jr. as health secretary, he pledged to let him “go wild.”
“[Kennedy] entered into that environment as the person who is going to give it a megaphone,” Motta said.
Under RFK Jr., the country’s health agencies have made unscientific claims about vaccines, further fueling a mistrust of doctors and science. In October, the CDC stopped recommending the COVID-19 vaccine for most healthy people. Late last month, a Food and Drug Administration official claimed without evidence that 10 children have died from the COVID-19 vaccine. Kennedy’s push for baseless claims about vaccines even led to the firing of Susan Monarez, the former CDC director who refused to sign off on his agenda.
If Kennedy and parental rights activists have their way, outbreaks like these could become more common. And the consequences will be felt by all — vaccinated or not.
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