As Jessica Biel and other celebrities weigh in, California looks to limit vaccine exemptions

SAN FRANCISCO – Against the backdrop of a national measles outbreak, California lawmakers weigh legislation aimed at cracking down on vaccination exemptions.

Thursday, Senate Bill 276 goes before the state’s Assembly Health Committee before probably moving on to a full Assembly vote and, ultimately, the desk of Gov. Gavin Newsom. This week, he expressed concerns that led to amendments to the bill, narrowing its focus.

The vote comes at a time of heightened concern about exposure to once eradicated diseases, as well as the potential side effects of vaccinations on young children.

Though a chorus of “anti-vax” voices has grown across the country, California is one of the nation’s toughest states when it comes to avoiding vaccinations.

A Public Policy Institute of California poll shows 75% of respondents say parents should vaccinate their children, and 80% are concerned that a U.S. outbreak of nearly 1,000 measles cases, the largest in more than 25 years, will continue to spread. At least 52 of those cases were reported in California.

As amended, the bill is less specific about what qualifies for an exemption and includes family medical history as part of the evaluation process. Exemptions typically are granted if a patient has an autoimmune disease or cancer, which may be adversely affected by a vaccine.

Originally, the bill would have allowed the state's Health Department to review and even reject any medical exemption, but as rewritten, it would allow for such reviews only at schools where immunization rates fall below 95%.

Those supporting SB 276 are concerned about the rapid jump in vaccine exemptions across the state since SB 277 went into effect in 2015 – that law ended exemptions based on religious beliefs.

A California Healthline survey indicates exemptions for kindergartners in the state jumped to 4,812 in 2018-2019 from 931 in 2015-2016. (Exemptions for religious beliefs were at 16,817 in 2013-2014 and are at zero now.)

Laws similar to SB 277 are on the books in Maine, Washington and New York. Most recently, the Board of Health in Nashville, Tennessee, expressed an interest in eliminating the exemption based on religion.

Tuesday, Newsom said the amendments to SB 276 "will make it workable and addressed some of my bureaucratic anxieties."

Although supporters of the bill are buoyed by the governor’s intention of signing – especially after he expressed concern about government overreach this month – opponents warn that it puts a bureaucrat between parents and doctors.

“The media hype tends to immediately make these issues about vaccination versus anti-vaccination groups, but that’s not where I’m at,” says Assembly member Devon Mathis, R-Visalia, who is critical of the bill. “I care about keeping the government out of this decision-making process.”

A number of high-profile newsmakers have added their voices to the fight against SB 276, including actress Jessica Biel, who said she is not anti-vaccine but supports the rights of families to choose, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who called vaccines “a holocaust,” drawing fire from his own family members.

Vaccine exemptions spike

The bill’s author, physician and State Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, said the state needs an even more robust safeguard against potential epidemics.

“This is about the right of children and their families to be safe at school and the freedom of those who truly need exemptions from vaccines to get them,” Pan said. “Over 100 schools in California have had excessively high exemption rates, and that’s unsafe.”

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SB 276 would take 277 one step further, targeting "rogue doctors" who are freewheeling with exemptions.

“There are a small number of unscrupulous doctors out there, and we need to make sure they don’t continue,” said Pan, noting that the bill would trigger investigations of doctors who wrote five or more exemptions.

Christina Hildebrand, president of A Voice for Choice Advocacy, which opposes SB 276, agreed that unscrupulous doctors should be rooted out. But she said the fear of investigation might cause doctors to be hesitant about writing exemptions even when they’re legitimate.

“You’re penalizing 140,000 other doctors in this state, and the parents and children they serve,” Hildebrand said. “We can’t rush this bill, and there are many questions left unanswered.”

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Among them, she said, are defining what constitutes a fraudulent medical exemption and allowing for temporary exemptions, such as when a child has a cold, which could count against a doctor’s exemption count record.

“I’m told, ‘Trust your doctor,’ but now I’m being told, ‘Don’t trust your doctor, trust the state,’ ” she said. “We’re at risk of losing the doctor-patient relationship.”

Measles outbreak fuels debate

That view overstates the targeted focus of SB 276, said Kris Calvin, CEO of the American Academy of Pediatrics, California, which co-sponsored the bill with the California Medical Association, a professional organization that represents nearly a third of state's physicians.

“The key purpose of this bill is to address the quadrupling of exemptions in California since SB 277 went into effect, because there’s no reason for that,” she said. “It was clear to practicing physicians that having more kids unvaccinated would just hurt those who really do need exemptions.”

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Calvin said a small number of California doctors were seeing parents and "instead of having hard discussions about vaccines, were charging them a lot of money."

“This bill tackles that issue,” she said.

Hildebrand is skeptical that SB 276 will be limited to catching bad actors in the medical profession.

One of her children has a medical exemption for vaccines, and she worries about the state possibly denying that exemption should it be investigated if the school falls below the 95% vaccination level.

“So what options am I left with?” she said. “Do I move out of the state? Well, I’m divorced, so I can’t. Do I homeschool my child, even when she is doing incredibly well in school? There are just too many questions still left unanswered, and the impact of this becoming law could be huge.”

For bill sponsor Pan, SB 276 is a case in which the rights of the many may outweigh the needs of the few.

“The opponents of this bill are talking about having a privilege, getting an exemption from vaccines, that could put people in harm’s way,” he said. “People being afraid to go outside because of a measles outbreak, that’s not freedom.”

Follow USA TODAY national correspondent @marcodellacava

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: As Jessica Biel and other celebrities weigh in, California looks to limit vaccine exemptions