Before Michigan parents can exercise their legal right to a vaccine exemption for their children, the state now requires them to answer a questionnaire about their personal beliefs, rating whether they “strongly agree” or “strongly disagree” that vaccines are safe, important, and effective, The Federalist revealed.
The mandatory online course, developed by University of Michigan professor Michael Rubyan and roughly 40 public health nurses, presents these three statements at the start and again at the end. What the state measures as “learning” is functionally indistinguishable from measuring whether a parent’s views have shifted toward agreement with the government’s position.
There is no option for parents to decline answering. No “that is not the state’s business” button exists. The only available responses run from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” to “do not know,” which still constitutes a recorded answer about one’s state of mind. Parents receive no explanation of where their attitudinal data goes or who reviews it.
The compelled-speech problem is obvious enough that parents can see it without legal training. But the deeper issue may be that Michigan’s own law never authorized any of this.
The state’s vaccine exemption statute dates to 1978. Under MCL 333.9215(2), a child is exempt when a parent “presents a written statement to the administrator of the child’s school … to the effect that the requirements of this part cannot be met because of religious convictions or other objection to immunization.”
That’s the complete legal test: a written statement delivered to the school. The legislature deliberately wrote “or other objection,” declining to probe what the objection is, whether it’s sincere, or whether the state considers it valid.
One quiz question asks what a parent named Maria must do to obtain a valid waiver. Among the options: “Fill out and sign a waiver form at home and send it to the school.” That describes exactly what the 1978 statute requires. The course marks it incorrect.
The “correct” answer: “Attend a vaccine education session and get a waiver from the local health department.”
