Florida has become the first state to suspend all vaccine mandates, following an announcement on Wednesday from Governor Ron DeSantis and Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, noting an end to vaccine requirements for K-12 students in both public and private schools.

Previously, parents were required to fill out religious or medical exemption forms if they wanted to abstain from vaccinating their children for illnesses such as measles, rubella, and polio. Florida, however, has decided that vaccines or individual vaccine exemptions are no longer a requirement to attend school.

“Every last one of them [vaccines] is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” Ladapo said.

Florida is also implementing its own Make America Healthy Again commission, according to DeSantis. The objective is to promote individual medical freedom, informed consent, and parents’ rights.

This past spring, schools in South Florida saw a rise in religious vaccine exemptions, including in both Broward and Miami-Dade county schools.

The Florida Association of School Administrators (FASA) also reported this August that childhood vaccination rates in Central Florida had hit a 20-year low.

“Across the U.S., the share of children with exemptions from required vaccines rose to an all-time high of 3.6% in the 2024-25 school year,” the FASA report reads. “In Florida, the group of kids exempted from vaccine requirements was nearly double that at more than 6%. And in some Florida counties, the exemption rate is as high as 15%, according to state health data.”  

In 2020, 93.5 percent of Florida kindergarteners were vaccinated, while in 2024, that number fell to 89.8 percent, according to the Florida Department of Health. This school year, the numbers dropped even further, with only 88.7 kindergarteners vaccinated.

The decision to drop all vaccine mandates is in keeping with DeSantis’s campaign promises on parental rights. He also signed a bill prohibiting instruction on sexual identity and gender ideology in classrooms in 2022.

Florida’s announcement continues the state’s trend of vaccine hesitancy, especially for children, notably after Ladapo said that he does not recommend that children receive mRNA Covid vaccines in 2022.

Florida was ground zero for the anti-lockdown movement and Covid vaccine hesitancy during 2020.

Florida was the first state in the country to mandate in-person learning after shutting down schools. The state also passed a law that required employers to provide broad Covid vaccine exemptions if there was a mandate in place. Exemptions included religious, medical, and Covid-19 immunity, to name a few.

Before Florida’s announcement, all states and the District of Columbia had some sort of vaccine requirement.

“Who am I as a government or anyone else, or as a man standing here now, to tell you what you should put in your body?” Ladapo said. “Who am I to tell you what your child should be putting in their body? I don’t have that right.”