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Texas parents will no longer have to wait weeks for a vaccine exemption form to be mailed to them if they want their children opted out of state-required immunizations to attend school.
This week, the state health agency quietly unveiled the new downloadable vaccine exemption form, the result of state Rep. Lacey Hull’s House Bill 1586 which went into effect on Monday. Along with the form, the Texas Department of State Health Services also published a document listing the benefits and risks of immunization.
The new law does nothing to change the childhood vaccine schedule. Instead, it would allow parents to download at home a form that allows children to be exempted from being vaccinated in order to attend public schools. The parents can show the same filled out form for two years before having to fill out a new one.
Before the new law, parents had to contact the state health agency and request the exemption form be mailed to them.
Parents still have to get a notary’s signature before they can present the form to school officials.
“The previous mailed, hard-copy process for requesting vaccine exemption affidavits was outdated, costly to taxpayers, raised privacy and tracking concerns, and created unnecessary barriers for families seeking to exercise their rights,” said Rebecca Hardy, executive director of Texans for Vaccine Choice, one group that lobbied to have the form be more accessible.
Hardy called the new law “an empowering change.”
Terri Burke, executive director of The Immunization Partnership, which advocates for public policies in support of vaccination, said she is pleased that the group’s recommendation that information about the benefits of vaccines was available to parents considering the exemption. The documents detailing the benefits of vaccines are not attached, linked or contained in the downloadable exemption form file, but DSHS’ exemption overview webpage links the document under the link to the exemption form.
“We parents digest that information before completing the form,” she said.
The law goes into effect just months after a measles outbreak in West Texas, which killed two young girls, has been declared over. The outbreak began in Gaines County, where school vaccination levels have been lower than 95%, the gold standard used by public health officials and schools to ensure herd-immunity.
Since 2018, the requests to the Texas Department of State Health Services for a vaccine exemption form have doubled from 45,900 to more than 93,000 in 2024.
Even before the new form became easier to access, the state received 17,197 requests for a vaccine exemption form in July, 36% higher than the number reported in July 2023.
Texas leads the nation with the most kindergartners — more than 25,000 —who were not fully vaccinated against measles, followed by Florida and California, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data released in July. The Texas measles kindergarten vaccination rate of 93.24% is the lowest it's been since at least 2011, ranking the state 18th nationally.
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