I have no blood connection with John Adams, one of our nation’s founding fathers and the second president of the United States. But I’ve read enough of his letters to find a real kinship with the underappreciated man.

One of his famous quotes is often paraphrased, but below is a direct quote from an Adams letter to fellow Continental Congress delegate John Penn.

“…The true Idea of a Republic, is ‘An Empire of Laws and not of Men’: and therefore as a Republic is the best of Governments so, that particular Combination of Power, which is best contrived for a faithfull Execution of the Laws, is the best of Republics.”

In short, our government is supposed to be based on laws and not the whims of men. And that issue is at the heart of the fight, now in the courts, over whether there should be a religious exemption to the state’s school-age vaccine law.

If you thought last week’s rulings in Kanawha County and Raleigh County helped provide clarity on the issue of whether Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s executive order allowing for religious vaccine exemptions can supersede state code that only allows for medical exemptions to the compulsory vaccine law, they do not. In fact, the issue remains cloudy as many schools are set to start in two weeks.

I sat Thursday in the courtroom of 14th Judicial Circuit Judge Michael Froble in Beckley, where he granted a preliminary injunction requested by three Raleigh County parents blocking that county school system from barring their children from public school. These families all have religious vaccine exemptions issued by the state Department of Health, following Morrisey’s January executive order.

However, that injunction only benefits those three families. It’s not a statewide injunction against all county school systems or even the West Virginia Board of Education and its directive to counties to continue to follow the compulsory vaccine law. It’s only binding on the state Board of Education and the Raleigh County Board of Education in regard to the three families that sued.

The state board issued a press release Thursday following the ruling urging counties to continue to follow the existing law versus accepting the Department of Health-approved religious vaccine exemptions provided to the schools by parents. But as it stands, the state board and State Superintendent of Schools Michele Blatt could easily see themselves being dragged into courtrooms in all 55 counties to defend against injunctions.

The state board still has to decide whether to appeal the Raleigh County decision to the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, but I imagine they will. It’s going to take the state Supreme Court justices weighing in and interpreting whether the 2023 Equal Protection for Religion Act can be used to create a religious vaccine exemption that does not exist within the compulsory vaccine law that has been on the state’s books since the 1930s.

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The other case ruled on last week was brought by the ACLU of West Virginia and Mountain State Justice asking a Kanawha County judge to order the state Department of Health to follow the vaccine law. The judge threw out the case because the organizations did not provide the state with a 30-day notice of their intent to sue, which is required by law.

I can’t speak for what the attorneys were thinking, but not filing the 30-day notice seems like a rookie mistake. And I think they knew it too, considering they also tried to ask for injunctive relief at the end of one of their briefs, which is the main exception to the 30-day notice requirement.

What I don’t understand is why no one has directly filed against Morrisey and filed injunctions and/or challenged the legal authority of his executive order. While briefs on both the Raleigh and Kanawha County cases talk about the order, it seems to me as a non-lawyer that the way to stop the religious vaccine exemption is to challenge the legality of the executive order.

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Should there be a religious vaccine exemption within state code? Maybe. I certainly don’t have a personal problem with such a thing, though as I’ve said in this space before I prefer a philosophical exemption. Rather than use faith or religious convictions you might truly believe or simply say you believe to avoid your child getting a vaccine, at least a philosophical exemption means you don’t have to possibly lie, which most faiths frown on.

But regardless, I think we can all agree that if a religious exemption is going to exist, it needs to be within state code and not an arbitrary executive order. But that is going to involve Morrisey and pro-religious exemption lawmakers crafting a bill in such a way that can pass with a majority of the House of Delegates and state Senate agreeing.

During the recent session, a majority of lawmakers in the House were not comfortable with the religious exemption in a bill that failed, which had no real hoops to jump through. While 45 states have some form of a religious exemption, they all require different things. Some states require the parents/guardians to watch an educational video showing the issues with being unvaccinated. Some states require notarized letters.

Having a law in place with some reasonable requirements would be better than waiting on the state Supreme Court to decide next steps.