TALLAHASSEE – Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is urging Florida’s Catholic schools to allow their students to opt out of mandated vaccines on religious grounds or potentially face losing tuition voucher money from the state.
Florida has long required students attending public and private school to be vaccinated against diseases like measles, mumps, chickenpox and more. Children can avoid vaccinations, though, if their parents secure a religious exemption.
But many of Florida’s Catholic schools don’t recognize that religious exemption as valid, saying the church doesn’t teach that vaccines, even those developed using aborted fetus cells, are “intrinsically evil.”
Uthmeier, a Catholic himself, wants that to change. On Friday, he sent a letter to the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops threatening the schools with the loss of state vouchers if they don’t accept religious vaccine exemptions.
Today, I sent a letter to the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops regarding their schools’ vaccine mandates.
Ironically, they won’t offer religious exemptions as prescribed by state law.
This is troubling and may disqualify them from state scholarships and vouchers. pic.twitter.com/W595FEuvPu
— Attorney General James Uthmeier (@AGJamesUthmeier) July 31, 2026
In the letter, he acknowledges that a religious school doesn’t have to take the exemption forms if granting one violates the school’s religious tenements.
“But as a Catholic, I am confident that the teachings of the Catholic Church do not require Catholic schools to compel students to take vaccines derived from the tissue of aborted children against the sincerely-held religious objections of their parents,” Uthmeier wrote.
He cites philosopher and priest Thomas Aquinas, Pope Leo XIV, the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the former president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to argue his point – that Catholic schools have “no legitimate religious reason” to refuse vaccine exemption forms.
His letter argues that vaccines are not a moral obligation, citing statements discussing the COVID-19 vaccine, and says that parents have the right to be their children’s main decisionmaker.
“Institutions run by the Catholic Church now threaten to place an undue burden on parents that would effectively deny them the fundamental right to choose a school that corresponds to their own convictions,” Uthmeier said.
Uthmeier asked the conference, which represents Florida’s seven dioceses on public policy, to write back by Aug. 7. He said if it continues to refuse student vaccine exemptions, to state their religious reasons clearly.
Florida’s universal school voucher system has led to a boom in Florida Catholic schools’ enrollment. Over 95% of students at Catholic school are on some kind of state scholarship, said Jim Rigg, superintendent of Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Miami.
A spokesperson for the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops, Michele Taylor, said they were reviewing the letter and would respond.
“Be assured, Florida’s Catholic schools are operating in accord with the law and Church teaching,” Taylor said in an email.
Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration last year pushed to end all vaccine mandates in Florida. That plan never got off the ground. A bill that would have loosened requirements and allowed a conscience-based objection died in the Legislature.
The Department of Health’s planned rule change to remove four vaccines not required in state law – including chickenpox and Hepatitis B – hasn’t yet gone forward. But at a workshop in December, a spokesperson for the conference pushed against the state’s plan.
In December, a spokesperson for the conference said in a statement that while there are moral concerns with vaccines produced with aborted fetus materials, there isn’t sufficient reason to not require vaccination.
“It is never morally permissible to do an evil act even for good purposes, but to receive a vaccine is not an evil act in itself,” the conference said in a statement in December.
The spokesperson noted that people have concerns about the safety of vaccines, but said the proper place to address that is through medical science.
“Even if one believed that the institutions have been corrupted or that the entire healthcare industry with regard to vaccines, chronic illness, and drugs was a scam, the remedy is still not claiming religious exemption, but rather reform of the institutions,” the December statement said.
