Florida is planning to end all vaccination requirements in the state, including requirements for school children to get routine childhood vaccinations that protect them and their communities from severe and life-threatening diseases, such as Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), pertussis (whooping cough), diphtheria, measles, tetanus, RSV, and polio.
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo made the announcement at a press conference on Wednesday alongside Governor Ron DeSantis.
"What I'm most excited about is an announcement that we're making now, which is that the Florida Department of Health, in partnership with the governor, is going to be working to end all vaccine mandates in Florida law—all of them, all of them, all of them, every last one of them," Ladapo said. "Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery."
Ladapo, who has a history of being anti-vaccine and spreading misinformation, went on to argue against the public aspect of public health, saying that there is "no ethical basis" for requiring vaccination to, in part, protect the most vulnerable from infectious diseases. That vulnerable people, such as newborns and the immunocompromised, may be unnecessarily exposed to vaccine-preventable, life-threatening diseases is just "part of the experience of life," Ladapo claimed. He also called mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, which saved millions of lives at the height of the pandemic, "poison."
If Florida moves forward with the plans, the state will become the only state in the country to not have vaccination requirements for public school attendance, though many, including Florida, currently offer exemptions for non-medical reasons. Nationwide, non-medical exemptions are at an all-time high, and kindergarten vaccination rates have fallen to the range of 92 percent, below the 95 percent target needed to prevent community spread.
Later in the conference, DeSantis said that some of the rollback of vaccination requirements could be carried out by Ladapo directly, but that "the rest would require changes from the legislature."
The plans come as one of the most notorious anti-vaccine activists in the country, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is the top health official. Since becoming the secretary of health and human services, Kennedy has worked relentlessly to disparage vaccines, spread misinformation about them, and dismantle access and federal recommendations for them.
This year has also seen the largest measles outbreak since the highly infectious virus was declared eliminated from the country in 2000. The US case total for this year has reached a 33-year high, and two otherwise-healthy school-aged children died from the infection in Texas.
007 First Light State of Play September 2025: Everything Announced