For decades, the state has required numerous vaccines for kids attending school, a list which today includes shots that protect against measles-mumps-rubella, polio, chickenpox and Hepatitis B.
But Ladapo on Wednesday compared these mandates to “slavery,” and promised that they all will soon end.
“All of them. Every last one of them,” Ladapo said to raucous cheers from the crowd assembled at the Grace Christian School in Valrico. “Who am I as a man standing here now to tell you what you should put in your body?”
Wesley Chapel pediatrician Dr. Nancy Silva said ending the vaccine mandates for school children will endanger their health and bring back diseases with life-threatening health complications that most parents of school-age children have never faced.
She questioned why the DeSantis administration would make vaccines an issue when school mandates have proven effective at eradicating and minimizing the spread of childhood diseases.
“I hope parents understand the great wonder of vaccines and how they have saved millions of lives over the decades.”
Immunizations have saved at least 154 million lives in the last 50 years, according to the World Health Organization. The vast majority of the lives saved were infants.
All 50 states and Washington, D.C., have laws requiring certain vaccines for students to attend school. Florida is the first state to publicly call for doing away with such requirements.
Removing vaccine requirements entirely would require the Legislature’s sign-off. But DeSantis and Ladapo can make some changes without needing to pass a bill.
State statute says that immunizations “shall be required” for polio, diphtheria, rubeola, rubella, pertussis, mumps and tetanus. The law also allows the Department of Health to set rules requiring vaccines for other diseases.
Department rules require children to get four vaccines beyond what’s required in state law: Varicella, or chickenpox; Hepatitis B; Haemophilus influenzae type b, or Hib; and Pneumococcal conjugate, or PCV15/20.
Katie Young, a spokesperson for the Department of Health, said the department will move to remove those four vaccines from state rules, which she said is a process that can take around 80 days once initiated.
As part of that rule change, Young said the department will also seek to expand vaccine exemptions. Parents already can exempt their children from vaccines on religious grounds, an allowance that health experts have criticized in the past. Relatively few religions contain tenets forbidding vaccination.
The department plans to broaden the exemption to allow people to cite personally held beliefs as a reason for not getting their child vaccinated, Young said.
During the news conference, DeSantis said the rest of the proposal would come in the form of a “big medical freedom package” for lawmakers. Ladapo will take the lead on that, he said.
Spokespersons for Florida House Speaker Danny Perez and Senate President Ben Albritton did not respond to requests for comment as of mid-afternoon Wednesday.
Until recently, the DeSantis administration’s criticism of vaccines had been reserved for COVID-19 shots. In 2022, against the recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Ladapo’s Department of Health recommended healthy children not take mRNA COVID vaccines. The department has since recommended against the shots for all populations.
Wednesday’s announcement marks a new moment in the administration’s break with the public health community over vaccines. Health experts have long maintained that vaccines are most effective at stopping the spread of disease when they’re widely adopted. In the 20th century, vaccines were used to eradicate diseases such as smallpox.
But in recent years, many on the American right have grown skeptical of all vaccines. President Donald Trump appointed Robert Kennedy Jr., an avowed opponent of many immunizations, to lead the federal Department of Health and Human Services.
Pre-pandemic, roughly 94 percent of Florida kindergartners were up to date on immunizations, state data shows. By last school year, that rate had fallen to 88 percent amid increasing vaccine skepticism — the lowest in 20 years. That level is considered inadequate to protect against outbreaks of highly contagious diseases like measles.
The announcement also comes at a delicate political moment for DeSantis. He’s looking for a gubernatorial candidate to cement his conservative legacy in Florida, and he’s looking to stay relevant in the national news cycle as his term as governor expires in January 2027. Two potential DeSantis successors also spoke at Wednesday’s event: Lt. Gov. Jay Collins and first lady Casey DeSantis .
Democrat David Jolly, who’s running to succeed DeSantis as governor in 2026, quickly denounced the state’s announcement and urged his potential Republican gubernatorial opponents, former House Speaker Paul Renner and U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, to do the same.
“The next Governor gets to fire this guy,” Jolly posted to X, referring to Ladapo. “Hopefully Byron Donalds or Paul Renner would do the same.”
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