California is a de facto mandatory vaccination state for public or private school attendance. Left with only a non-functioning medical exemption, California parents with vaccine-injured students— or children who they feel are at risk for vaccine injury— have been forced to vaccinate, home school or leave the state.

Little-known practical options exist for children attending private and religious schools. There are even a handful of California public schools accepting a vaccine waiver.

From Two Exemptions to None in California

There used to be two exemptions to school vaccination in California: personal belief and medical.

In 2015, when only 2.5% of children attended school with a personal belief vaccine exemption— which included religious objections— lawmakers eliminated it. Families were left only with a narrowed medical exemption.

Then in 2019, Governor Newsom signed SB 276 into law, demolishing the medical exemption.

What remains is a designed-to-fail system: doctors now must write medical exemptions under penalty of perjury, are limited to just a handful per year, and must log them into the state’s anti-vaxxer database (CAIR-ME). As a result, almost no doctors will write them.

The school schedule requires 10 vaccines (about 30 doses.)

However, many pediatricians use the school requirement as a battering ram to bully unaware parents into giving their children even more vaccines! The anti-MAHA state public health alliance vaccine schedule contains 17 vaccines (about 90 doses.) Simple math reveals that seven of those vaccines and about 60 doses are not actually required for school.

Let me say that again- most pediatricians are pushing 60 non-mandatory doses of vaccines onto California children, conflating the bigger schedule with school mandates.

Let’s turn to the school mandates and emerging exemptions.

Some Religious Schools Quietly Accepting Religious Exemptions

California is one of only four states that does not have a religious exemption. The others are New York, Connecticut and Maine. The religious exemption in West Virginia is allowed by Governor Executive Order, but the Board of Education currently refuses to accept them.

Despite the law, some California religious schools are willing to quietly accept religious exemptions to vaccination.

You have to work with your child’s religious school in advance and know that they would be friendly to receiving and accepting a religious exemption.

Your own clergy-member may be able to help you with a religious exemption.

Pastor Ricardo Beas may be able to help you through The Natural Law Church.

Also Attorney Greg Glaser provides a religious exemption form that may work.

ADA Waivers: An Exciting Update Regarding Which Schools Take it and Effective Pushback Techniques

Perhaps not surprisingly, when California eliminated medical exemptions, the law was silent on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). It was likely an intentional omission, since lawmakers know that states cannot pass laws that infringe on federal disability rights.

Enter the ADA Waiver. A powerful tool originally pioneered by Frontline Health Advocates for workplace COVID shot mandates, and expanded a few years ago to include waivers for school vaccinations.

Most school administrators have a knee-jerk reaction and incorrectly call the ADA Waiver a vaccine medical exemption and try to force parents to go through the CAIR-ME database. The medical exemption is state law, the ADA is federal. State vaccine law does not supersede federal disability law.

The ADA Waiver is not subjected to state school mandates and must not be submitted to the CAIR-ME database.

The process of working with a school to accept the ADA Waiver for a particular student can be quite adversarial, and acceptance is not guaranteed. Private schools, religious schools, and even some public schools in more rural or conservative areas have students attending with the ADA Waiver. Thousands of California students are now using it.

If you feel your child meets the definition of an ADA disability — from allergies to invisible disabilities to autoimmune conditions— you can pursue an ADA Waiver through Frontline Health Advocates.

One fee. Three or four steps.

1. Intake appointment
2. Appointment with a licensed medical doctor— since ADA is a federal law, the medical doctor does not have to be licensed in California
3. If your child qualifies, an ADA letter is generated and you give that directly to the school. Do not capitulate to the school if they say it has to be entered into CAIR-ME.
4. NEW Pushback Team consultation if the school doesn’t accept it right away

The actual disability is protected by HIPPA laws. It’s a “don’t ask, don’t tell” situation: schools cannot ask for details about the disability.

Controversy About Religious Schools and the ADA is Overstated

Claims that religious schools are completely exempt from the ADA often don’t hold up under scrutiny. On the face of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (enacted July 26, 1990), under 42 U.S.C. § 12187 (Section 307 of the ADA), it appears churches and schools are totally exempt.

The ADA provision explicitly states that Title III (public accommodations) “shall not apply to religious organizations or entities controlled by religious organizations, including places of worship.”

I got a panicked call about this the other day, and took a deep dive on the topic.

I spoke to disability specialist attorneys— they are the ones who drafted and filed Free Now Foundation’s lawsuit to compel all schools to accept the ADA Waiver. She said the intent of the church ADA exemption was to avoid forcing conversion of old church buildings to accommodate physical disabilities. This has been more broadly applied, but that should not dissuade anyone from submitting an ADA Waiver to a religious school

According to the disability law specialists, religious schools must accept the ADA Waiver for many reasons, including: if they accept federal funds (Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act), if they take state funds, if they accommodate any other disabilities (like EpiPens), or if they have written non-discrimination policies.

The New Pushback Team at Frontline Health Advocates

Yes, the ADA Waiver can be an adversarial process with a school, and that is not everyone’s cup of tea— but there are proven ways to push back. Frontline Health Advocates has compiled a list of about a dozen legitimate ways to push back to get your child’s school to accept an ADA Waiver from vaccination.

If you submit a Waiver to your child’s school, they advise not to take a meeting with school officials if they are trying not to accept it. Instead reach out to the new Pushback Team at Frontline Health Advocates— they will help you put the school on written notice instead.

The Blue Card Dilemma

The school may struggle with how to fill out The Blue Card— a vaccination record the school nurse’s office must hand-transcribe either onto paper or electronically, dose by dose for all ten of the required vaccinations.

The ADA specialist attorneys advise not filling out the card at all, since federal disability law is not subjected to state vaccination laws.

Also note that in Section 3, there are boxes in the “Other” column. If your child has an IEP (Individualized Education Plan), is in Independent Study (must be voluntary, by law), or is in a home school program, there is an exemption box that can be checked. Those are the three circumstances where vaccination is not required, and no exemption is needed. Note that there is no box for ADA!

If the school is at a loss as to how to check their Blue Card boxes for the ADA Waiver or a religious exemption (at a religious school), and won’t budge if they can’t fill out their form, seek legal counsel and ask about having the administrator sign next to the applicable grade span level in Section 3 “Staff Initials,” checking the box “Has All Required Vaccine Doses,” and putting the date of the acceptance of the religious exemption or ADA waiver in the far right column “Date Requirements Met.”

Three Types of Cases Bring More Hope: Religious Exemption, ADA Vaccine Waiver and a Case to End School Mandates

There is real hope now from the courts, and Free Now Foundation!

1. Four religious exemption cases await decisions from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (None of these are Free Now cases; We are watching them closely.)
2. Filed by Dr. Richard Fox, JD, Free Now Foundation’s due process case to end mandates is waiting to be heard by the 9th Circuit
3. Filed by Jessica Barsotti, Esq., Free Now Foundation’s case to force all California schools (public and private) to recognize the ADA Waiver from vaccination based on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is moving toward the first hearing

California families may get the religious exemption back this year. If so, my attorneys advise me it would likely be this Fall.

A religious exemption win in the 9th Circuit would increase the chances of winning our case to end mandates, also to be decided by the 9th this year. If we lose at the 9th, we have legal strategies, and an additional experienced attorney who will join the case, to keep pursuing a win by 2027.

In 2027, we expect to win the ADA case.

The end of mandates would mean that even if the religious exemption and ADA Waiver are routinely accepted, parents would no longer need any exemptions from vaccination to send their children to school! A simple “no” will suffice.

It’s really important to attack the problem in all three ways, since we don’t know which cases will win first.

Also, as the digital surveillance state creeps in— amid rumors that state legislators are laying out initial plans to tie driver license privileges to vaccination— winning both religious and disability exemptions now for students paves the way for this case law to apply to adults as well. This will be extremely important to preserve medical freedom for everyone.

Support Our Work to Expand Exemptions and End School Mandates