Florida AG threatens to pull funding from Catholic schools over vaccine issue

Education admin July 31, 2026 0 Comments

Florida AG threatens to pull funding from Catholic schools over vaccine issue

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is telling Catholic schools to allow students to opt out of mandated vaccine requirements on religious grounds, or they may lose state voucher funding.

In a letter to the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops, Uthmeier said he recently became aware that at least one Catholic school system in Florida refused to grant religious exemptions to student vaccination requirements for the upcoming school year — a decision Uthmeier argued is against Florida law.

Despite the state’s recent efforts to eliminate Florida’s vaccine requirements, Florida law has long required students attending public or private schools to be vaccinated against diseases like polio, measles and chickenpox. However, children can bypass those requirements for religious or health-based reasons.

Florida Catholic schools typically do not exempt students from vaccines for religious reasons because the Florida Bishops do not believe that the use of vaccines, even those developed using the cells of aborted fetuses, are “intrinsically evil.”

“There is nothing in Catholic moral teachings which would hold that the use of vaccines is immoral and sinful,” according to policies from the Catholic Diocese of Pensacola Tallahassee cited in Uthmeier’s letter. Catholic schools do, however, accept medical exemptions from vaccines with a valid doctor’s note.

Uthmeier wants this policy to change, and has cited his own Catholic beliefs as part of his reasoning.

“As a Catholic, I am confident that the teachings of the Catholic Church do not require Catholic schools to compel students to take vaccines derived from the tissue of aborted children against the sincerely-held religious objections of their parents,” Uthmeier wrote.

On Friday, Uthmeier said in a post on X.com that Catholic schools not offering religious exemptions to vaccine mandates, “may disqualify them from state scholarships and vouchers,” and demanded an answer to the letter by Aug. 7.

The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops said they are working on a response to the attorney general but clarified the schools are complying with Florida law.

“Be assured, Florida’s Catholic schools are operating in accord with the law and Church teaching,” said the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Uthmeier pointed to quotes from Pope Leo XIV on human dignity and “inalienable” rights and emphasized the Church’s teachings on the role of parents as primary educators for their children. Uthmeier stressed that the state of Florida is aiming to protect a parent’s ability to exempt their child from mandated vaccine requirements and that the Catholic Church is placing “an undue burden on parents” that would deny them their “fundamental right to choose a school that corresponds to their own convictions.”

The state’s expanded use of the voucher system has led to a boom in voucher use in Catholic schools, contributing to a boost in enrollment in private schools across the state.

Over 95% of students enrolled in Miami Catholic schools are on some kind of state scholarship, with most receiving around $6,500 in vouchers to put forth toward tuition, according to the Archdiocese of Miami.

This story was produced with financial support from Trish and Dan Bell and donors in South Florida’s Jewish and Muslim communities, including Khalid and Diana Mirza and the Mohsin and Fauzia Jaffer Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.