Florida’s Surgeon General, Joseph Ladapo, announced on Wednesday that the state intends to eliminate all mandates, comparing them to slavery.
The removal of these mandates would mean that children would no longer be required to be vaccinated to attend school in Florida. This action would make it the first state to abandon a practice widely credited with boosting vaccination rates and reducing the risk of spreading infectious diseases such as measles.
“Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body?” Ladapo stated.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis endorsed this initiative and acknowledged that while the state can remove some vaccine mandates, it would require “changes from the legislature” to eradicate them entirely.
Ladapo is a known critic of vaccines and has opposed mainstream scientific research and guidance. In the past, Ladapo has minimized the importance of COVID-19 vaccines, which public health experts have attributed to saving millions of lives during the pandemic, describing them as “nothing special.” He also promoted unproven treatments for COVID-19, including hydroxychloroquine, which the World Health Organization has cautioned is not an effective treatment for the virus. During a measles outbreak in 2024 at a Florida elementary school, Ladapo asserted that guardians should have the right to decide whether their unvaccinated children are kept home, contrary to federal guidance that recommends excluding children from schools in such circumstances.
Ladapo did not offer specifics on the plans to abolish all vaccine mandates in the state, although he repeatedly affirmed that “every last one of them” would be eradicated, stating that the practice “is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.”
Florida’s move to end mandates within the state comes as the national Department of Health and Human Services—led by another well-known vaccine skeptic, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—has implemented a number of controversial changes to the country’s vaccine policies.
The governors of Oregon, California and Washington formed a health alliance on Wednesday to provide health guidance for their state residents, including on vaccine safety, in a repudiation of the Trump Administration. The alliance emerges in response to what California Gov. Gavin Newsom described as “the blatant politicization” of the CDC following the , Susan Monarez last week.
Meanwhile, have been on the rise among the American public. Vaccination exemptions have been increasing in states across the country. During the 2024-25 school year, vaccine exemptions for kindergarteners rose from 3.3% to 3.6%, while 36 states reported overall rising exemptions, according to . Seventeen states reported exemptions exceeding 5%. Childhood vaccination rates, meanwhile, have been declining: The agency recorded a decrease in vaccine coverage for kindergarteners for all reported vaccines in the 2024-2025 school year.
About 4 million deaths worldwide are prevented by childhood vaccines every year, according to the . The World Health Organization roughly 154 million lives have been saved over the last 50 years from global immunization efforts.