CHARLESTON – While an appeal remains pending before the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals over efforts to insert a religious exemption to the state’s school-age vaccine requirements, a three-judge federal appeals court panel ruled in favor of the state’s vaccine law in a separate case.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued a judgment Wednesday reversing a ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia in a case brought by two parents in 2024 challenging the legality of West Virginia’s compulsory vaccine law.

In the 2-1 ruling, the panel reversed an October 2024 order by U.S. District Judge Thomas Kleeh granting a preliminary injunction in favor of Krystle and Anthony Perry, two parents who argued that the state’s compulsory vaccine law violated their First Amendment right to free exercise of religion.

The court held that West Virginia’s mandate – which requires children to be vaccinated against 10 infectious diseases to attend public and private school and provides only a medical exemption – is a constitutional exercise of the state’s police power.

Wednesday’s opinion was written by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, with Judge G. Steven Agee concurring.

“Rights, as important as they are, do not swing free and clear of the larger social compact,” Wilkinson wrote. “We live in a society that accords its citizens enormous benefits. In return, states can, in a measured way, require certain exactions and accommodations to the broader social interest.”

“West Virginia’s compulsory vaccination law does exactly that,” Wilkinson continued. “It is a legitimate exercise of the state’s power to protect the health and well-being of school children. Striking the law down would undermine not just our system of dual sovereignty, but also a long line of Supreme Court precedent.”

Krystle and Anthony Perry attempted to seek a religious vaccine exemption in 2024 when re-enrolling their child in the West Virginia Virtual Academy, one of two statewide virtual public charter schools in the state. The couple were told that State Code does not include a religious exemption. They filed their lawsuit against officials with the West Virginia Virtual Academy, Upshur County Schools, and the Bureau of Public shortly thereafter.

The Perrys sought a ruling from the federal district court to determine that the state not having accommodating for a religious vaccine exemption was unconstitutional and prohibit state and local education officials through preliminary and permanent injunctions from enforcing the state’s compulsory vaccine law.

Kleeh’s order granting the preliminary injunction was appealed to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in November 2024. But Kleeh granted a motion to stay the case in January 2025 following the issuing of an executive order by Gov. Patrick Morrisey that same month allowing the state Department of Health to grant religious exemptions.

In June 2025, the state Board of Education voted to require the Department of Education to issued guidance to county school systems to continue to follow the compulsory vaccine law and not except religious exemptions. That resulted in Raleigh County parent Miranda Guzman and other families with children in Raleigh County Schools filing a lawsuit against state and local education officials to prohibit them from rejecting religious exemptions.

Fourteenth Judicial Circuit Judge Michael Froble granted the parents a preliminary injunction last summer, and permanent injunctive and declaratory relief earlier this fall, citing that the Equal Protection for Religion Act – created by the Legislature in 2023 prohibiting excessive government limitations on the exercise of religious faith – allowed Morrisey to use his executive order authority to create a religious vaccine exemption.

Froble also certified the Guzman case as a class action applying to families with religious vaccine exemptions statewide except those with pending cases before other circuit court judges. The state Supreme Court agreed to take up the case last year. Attorneys representing state and local education officials filed a brief with Supreme Court in March.

Attorneys for the state and local education officials are seeking oral arguments before the state Supreme Court, asking the justices to reverse Froble’s permanent injunction ruling and order Froble to enter a judgement in their favor, or vacate Froble’s ruling and remand the case to the lower court for appropriate evidentiary development.

Attorneys representing the Guzman defendants have until May 11 to file their brief in the case, with education officials’ attorneys having until June 1 to reply.