CHARLESTON – A Raleigh County judge issued his official written ruling Wednesday, siding with parents against state and local education officials over their refusal to accept their religious exemptions to West Virginia’s school-age vaccine law; a ruling which has wide-ranging implications.

Fourteenth Judicial Circuit Judge Michael Froble issued a written order in Guzman v. West Virginia Board of Education granting permanent injunctive and declaratory relief to the plaintiffs and the certified class of families with religious vaccine exemptions statewide except those with pending cases before other circuit court judges.

In his ruling, Froble cited the Equal Protection for Religion Act (EPRA) – created by House Bill 2042 in 2023 prohibiting excessive government limitations on the exercise of religious faith – as allowing for Gov. Patrick Morrisey to use his executive order authority to create a religious exemption to West Virginia’s compulsory vaccine law (CVL).

“The Court found that Plaintiffs met their burden under EPRA, that Defendants’ universal-denial policy substantially burdened Plaintiffs’ religious exercise by forcing them to choose between vaccination and public education, and that Defendants treated comparable or greater risks more leniently while failing to employ less restrictive alternatives,” Froble wrote.