Lawyers for families suing over religious exemptions to school vaccination requirements are now asking for class action status.
This comes as Judge Michael Froble of Raleigh County has already granted a preliminary injunction specifically applying to two local families and while a permanent injunction is still being considered. The judge heard two days of testimony last week and has called for a resumption in October.
The case, including the extensive amount of material already covered in the local courtroom, is widely anticipated to be subject to a state Supreme Court review next year.
Even with all that water under the bridge, attorneys for the Raleigh County families this week filed motions seeking influence for similar situations all over the state.
Testimony in the case last week showed that applications for about 570 students seeking religious exemptions have been filed with the state Department of Health so far. The state Department of Education has not honored them, saying the compulsory vaccination law has no mention of religious exemptions.
The case in Raleigh County was filed by parents who are asserting that the school system should honor religious exemptions to the state’s compulsory vaccination law. So far, it’s been understood that the outcomes in the local courtroom were to apply specifically to those families.
They sued under West Virginia’s “Equal Protection for Religion Act,” which went into law in 2023, allowing lawsuits by anyone contending their religious views have been violated.
The lawyers for the Raleigh families want the local court’s rulings to affect similar situations statewide. A Kentucky attorney who has been involved from the start, Christopher Wiest, filed a motion to lay out reasons he is professionally equipped to handle the case as a class action.
He looped in a colleague, attorney Aaron Siri, who specializes in vaccine lawsuits. Siri was personal attorney to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during his 2024 presidential run, and the two previously worked together on vaccine-related lawsuits.
Depending on how Judge Froble rules, the flurry of motions in Raleigh County could give the case statewide impact.
“Statewide declaratory and injunctive relief on all of the issues of the EPRA is appropriate for class members who have been determined to have sincere religious objections to vaccination by the Department of Health or a court of competent jurisdiction,” the attorneys wrote in a motion filed this week.
“The practical effect of the relief here would be that this Court’s final order (if in favor of Plaintiffs) can be taken into any other Circuit Court in West Virginia, and a trial can be held on the limited issue of whether those plaintiffs possess a sincerely held religious belief contrary to vaccination as required by the CVL.”