Wisconsin Lawmaker Wants Schools to Inform Parents About Their Rights to Vaccine Exemptions and How to Obtain Them

Guest author

August 12, 2025

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views

Wisconsin schools, childcare centers and nurseries could soon be required to inform parents and legal guardians about their right to request a vaccine exemption for their children in addition to being told what vaccinations the school requires.

The requirement is contained in a proposed bill, co-sponsored by state Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara and state Rep. Lindee Brill, both Republicans.

In a July 21 press release, Brill said that while Wisconsin parents already have the right to opt their children out of vaccination requirements for medical, religious or personal reasons, the process is unclear.

“Many parents are unaware of this right or are unclear about how to obtain that waiver and feel pressured to make medical decisions for their children that they otherwise would not have,” the press release stated.

Brill told The Defender that finding information about exemptions is “extremely difficult.”

“When the school forms go out, there’s nothing on there that currently lets [parents] know they can waive, and if you go to our DHS [Department of Health Services] website, it’s very difficult to find, for parents to know what their rights are,” Brill said.

Parental support for the bill ‘nothing short of overwhelming’

According to the press release, the proposed legislation will not change Wisconsin’s immunization laws or waiver criteria. However, it will “create a more consistent process across the state” and ensure that “parents are informed of their rights at the time they are making enrolment decisions.”

According to Wisconsin Public Radio, the bill began “circulating for sponsors” in the state legislature late last month. Brill said the bill has already received “a lot of support from the Republican side” and at least one Democrat supporter.

“Right now, we are waiting for it to be assigned to a committee and then, hopefully, get a hearing soon,” Brill said.

With the new school year set to begin soon, Brill said she hopes the bill will go through the legislative process “as quickly as possible.”

“We’d like to see this in place because we know people are filling out the forms probably right now for back to school,” Brill said. “I will be vigilant in reaching out and doing what I can to move that process along.”

Brill said that support among parents has been “nothing short of overwhelming.”

Brill, who is in her first term, said she was previously “actively involved in a very natural approach to medicine.” She credited U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s efforts in raising awareness about vaccine safety.

“We are incredibly grateful to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for all the work he has done and is doing to Make America Healthy Again,” Brill said in a press release. “A critical part of that effort is defending the leading role of parents in the health of their children, and I am proud to fight to put families first.”

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Cabral-Guevara, a board-certified family nurse practitioner, has previously supported legislation that would loosen vaccine requirements — including a bill introduced last year that would have required publicly funded colleges and universities to waive vaccine requirements for health, religious or personal reasons.

The Wisconsin Senate and Assembly passed that bill, but in March 2024, Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, vetoed it. He said he opposed the state legislature’s efforts to “micromanage decisions to respond to public health incidents.”

In 2022, Cabral-Guevara spoke in favor of natural immunity as a means of stopping the spread of COVID-19.

Brill rejects claim that declining vaccination rates led to measles cases

The proposed bill comes amid confirmation of the state’s first measles cases this year, with nine infections reported in Oconto County last weekend.

During a press conference on Tuesday, Dr. Ryan Westergaard, chief medical officer of DHS’ Bureau of Communicable Diseases, suggested that declining vaccination levels among Wisconsin children may be to blame for the measles cases, although he refrained from describing the cases as an outbreak.

Westergaard cited statistics indicating that, for the 2024-25 school year, 86.4% of students met the state’s minimum immunization requirements, representing a 2.8 percentage point decrease from the previous school year.

“This tells us that most Wisconsin families are protecting their children with vaccines,” Westergaard said. “Unfortunately, this level is below where we need to be to protect our state against outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases.”

According to the Wisconsin Examiner, 6.7% of Wisconsin students had an exemption for one or more vaccinations during the 2024-25 school year. Specifically, 5.8% had a personal conviction waiver, 1% had a religious exemption and 0.4% had a medical exemption.

But according to the Journal Sentinel, during the 2024-25 school year, “the percentage of students waiving all vaccines decreased to 1.3% from 1.9% the previous school year.”

Westergaard said that the rate of waivers in Wisconsin is higher than in many other states and that Wisconsin is “one of only 13 states that has the personal conviction waiver.”

In February, Wisconsin Public Radio, citing HHS figures from 2023, reported that Wisconsin has the second-lowest measles vaccination rate in the U.S., behind only Alaska.

‘Vaccine hesitancy’ is ‘healthy hesitancy’

In a press release issued Wednesday, Brill responded to Westergaard’s statements, saying he “framed the narrative squarely around what he calls ‘low vaccination rates,’ linking these directly with Wisconsin parents’ right to obtain a waiver for their children.”

“However, there was little to no discussion of why a parent might choose to seek this waiver,” Brill said. She cited the mumps-measles-rubella (MMR) vaccine, which “is manufactured using cells from aborted children,” as one such reason.

“This is the core issue,” Brill said. “While the Department of Health Services is deeply concerned over low vaccination rates, it has shown little interest in understanding or resolving the sincere religious or personal objections many parents have,” Brill said.

Brill told The Defender that narratives attempting to connect “vaccine hesitancy” to rising cases of measles are disingenuous.

“I think that narrative puts a very negative connotation on vaccine hesitancy. I believe that ‘vaccine hesitancy’ is ‘healthy hesitancy,’” Brill said. She cited a 2011 Harvard report showing that only 1% of vaccine-related injuries are reported to the U.S. government-run Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

“When we know that only 10%, and that’s on the high side, some reports say that 1% of all vaccine injuries are reported through VAERS, parents should be hesitant,” Brill said.

A ‘tide change’ as more parents advocate for children’s health, question vaccines

Brill said that as a growing number of parents become aware of issues related to vaccine safety, there has been a “tide change” with parents “starting to become their own advocates for their children and people being their own advocates for their health,” rather than “just trusting what medicine has told us for decades.”

“I think ‘vaccine hesitancy’ is a good thing. We should be questioning this. We shouldn’t just be lining up and getting vaccines,” Brill said.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released last week indicated that religious exemptions nationwide reached a record high for the third consecutive year. The number increased from 3.3% during the 2023-24 school year to 3.6% in 2024-25.

Recent polls show that a growing number of parents support a review of current childhood vaccination requirements.

A poll of over 1,000 registered voters conducted June 24-25 by John Zogby Strategies showed that 60% of parents with young children supported reviewing the current childhood vaccine schedule.

Findings published last month in JAMA Network Open showed 60% of pregnant women and young mothers are considering delaying or refusing routine vaccinations for their children.

A study funded by the National Institutes of Health and published in the journal Vaccine in February found that 74% of elementary school personnel surveyed in California did not believe their schools had the authority to deny medical exemptions and that a majority opposed COVID-19 mandates.

An Annenberg Public Policy Center survey conducted in January showed public support for religious exemptions has nearly doubled in the last six years.

Last year, a Gallup poll found that support for mandatory school vaccination has declined in recent years.

Brill said she hopes that her legislation, if passed, will be needed only for a short time.

“I would say that in the future, my hope would be that my bill and hopefully law at some point, isn’t needed, that we will get to the point that vaccine requirements are no longer a thing required to go to school, go to daycares, where we live in a society where people can choose to do that,” Brill said.

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