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By Clifton D. Parker

California’s tough new vaccination law is legally sound and will serve as a model for how to keep children healthy, Stanford professors say.

On June 25, California Gov. Jerry Brown approved a new state law (SB277) that substantially narrows exceptions to school-entry vaccination mandates. In doing so, California becomes the third state (Mississippi and West Virginia are the others) to disallow exemptions based on both religious and philosophical beliefs. Only medical exemptions remain.

“The move represents a stunning victory for public health that affects not only California schoolchildren, but the prospects for strengthening vaccination requirements nationwide,” wrote Michelle Mello and David Studdert, professors in both Stanford’s law and medical schools, in a July 22 New England Journal of Medicine article. Their co-author was Wendy Parmet, a Northeastern University law school professor.

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