Florida plan to drop school vaccine mandates won’t take effect for 90 days

Florida’s plan to drop school vaccine mandates likely won’t take effect for 90 days and would include only chickenpox and a few other illnesses unless lawmakers decide to extend it to other diseases, like polio and measles, the health department said on Sunday.

The department responded to a request for details, four days after Florida’s surgeon general, Dr Joseph Ladapo, said the state would become the first to make vaccinations voluntary and let families decide whether to inoculate their children.

It’s a retreat from decades of public policy and research that has shown vaccines to be safe and the most effective way to stop the spread of communicable diseases, especially among children. Despite that evidence, Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary, has expressed deep skepticism about vaccines.

Florida’s plan would lift mandates on school vaccines for hepatitis B, chickenpox, Hib influenza and pneumococcal diseases, such as meningitis, the health department said.

“The department initiated the rule change on September 3 2025, and anticipates the rule change will not be effective for approximately 90 days,” the state told the Associated Press in an email. The public school year in Florida started in August.

All other vaccinations required under Florida law to attend school “remain in place, unless updated through legislation” including vaccines for measles, polio, diphtheria, pertussis, mumps and tetanus, the department said.

Lawmakers don’t meet again until January 2026, although committee meetings begin in October.

Ladapo, appearing Sunday on CNN, repeated his message of free choice for childhood vaccines.

“If you want them, God bless, you can have as many as you want,” he said. “And if you don’t want them, parents should have the ability and the power to decide what goes into their children’s bodies. It’s that simple.”

Earlier this week, Ladapo garnered criticism after he compared vaccine mandates to “slavery”. Speaking at a press conference alongside Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis who has also expressed deep vaccine skepticism, Ladapo said of the vaccine requirements: “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.”

His comments drew outrage from lawmakers and health experts alike, with Democratic Florida state representative Anna Eskamani saying: “Ending vaccine mandates is reckless and dangerous. It will drive down immunization rates and open the door to outbreaks of preventable diseases, putting children, seniors and vulnerable Floridians at risk.”

Meanwhile, John Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, said: “Florida’s undertakers will now need to plan for the future by increasing their stocks of small coffins,” adding that all the preventable vaccines would increase in schools.

Ladapo had previously altered data in a 2022 study by the state’s health department to exaggerate the risks of cardiac death for young men. The study had initially disclaimed any significant risk associated with the vaccines for young men. However, Ladapo replaced the language to claim that men between 18 and 39 years old are at high risk of heart illness from two Covid vaccines that use mRNA technology.

Ladapo had also falsely claimed in 2023 that booster shots were not tested on humans and had “red flags.” The same year, the US Food and Drug Administration, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called Ladapo’s vaccine stances as harmful to the public.

“It is the job of public health officials around the country to protect the lives of the populations they serve, particularly the vulnerable,” the federal letter said, adding: “Fueling vaccine hesitancy undermines this effort.”

Florida currently has a religious exemption for vaccine requirements. Vaccines have saved at least 154 million lives globally over the past 50 years, the World Health Organization reported in 2024. The majority of those were infants and children.

Dr Rana Alissa, chair of the Florida chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said making vaccines voluntary puts students and school staff at risk.

This is the worst year for measles in the US in more than three decades, with more than 1,400 cases confirmed nationwide, most of them in Texas, and three deaths.

Whooping cough has killed at least two babies in Louisiana and a five-year-old in Washington state since winter, as it too spreads rapidly. There have been more than 19,000 cases as of 23 August, nearly 2,000 more than this time last year, according to preliminary CDC data.

Maya Yang contributed reporting