Seven months ago, Florida was poised to become the first state in the nation to make vaccines totally optional after state Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo decried mandates as "wrong" and dripping "with disdain and slavery."
The state Department of Health "is going to be working to end all vaccine mandates in Florida law. All of them!" he announced to thundering applause at a September press conference alongside Gov. Ron DeSantis.
But an effort to change rules by the department appears to have stalled. And a watered-down version of an anti-mandate bill appeared in this year's legislative session but failed to advance in both chambers.
"Maybe they saw this wasn't going to be as politically popular for them to do," said Simone Chriss, a civil rights attorney with Southern Legal Counsel.
READ MORE: Florida plans to remove vaccine mandates. What does that mean for schools?
Chriss attended a public workshop, hosted in December in Panama City by the health department, to discuss the proposed removal of four vaccines from the state's rules for entry into day cares and schools.
The state agency can remove vaccine requirements for varicella (chickenpox), hepatitis B, pneumococcal conjugate and haemophilus influenzae type B. Other vaccinations, like those against measles (MMR) and polio, are written into state law and would have to be changed by the Legislature.
Public comment went on for hours, with proponents of the changes spoke of the right to medical freedom and claimed injury from vaccines.
Major medical groups and pediatricians spoke in favor of routine immunizations, warned of an upsurge in the diseases and deaths vaccines prevent, and the need for 95% of children to get their shots to maintain herd immunity and protect people with compromised immune systems.
At that meeting, when questioned by Chriss, health department officials admitted they had not studied the regulatory costs of removing mandates, which is required by law and includes the costs of revising or updating all the systems used by schools and pediatricians across the state.
"Another thing they are required by statute to do is to hold workshops open to the public – and it specifically says in various regions of the state or the agency service area," Chriss added.
Those should take place in areas like Tampa, Orlando and Miami, with larger populations than Panama City. No further workshops have been scheduled. Chriss said the health department also hasn't filed a notice of proposed rulemaking, which is supposed to come within 180 days of the notice to initiate the change.
"Nor have they responded to any of the requests for information about the impact on human lives and health and safety," Chriss said.
Asked for an update, the health department told WUSF it is "currently in the rulemaking process," but gave no details.
Soon after Ladapo's announcement in September, CNN's Jake Tapper asked the surgeon general if the state had done any analysis of how many cases of illnesses could be projected by removing the mandates.
Ladapo answered: "Absolutely not," and framed the move as being about what's "right and wrong," and "an issue of parents' rights."
Fast forward a couple of months, and a bill (SB 1756) did appear in the Florida Senate. It didn't end vaccine mandates but added another way to opt out by claiming the shots go against personal beliefs. Florida already allows religious or medical exemptions.
Democrats lined up against it.
"It's currently very easy to opt out for religious reasons from school immunizations. Why is this bill necessary?" asked Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando, at a hearing. "Is your bill just about giving people more options to ignore school immunizations? Or is it intended to solve a public health problem?"
Opposition also came from some on the right.
Sen. Gayle Harrell, R-Stuart, brought up the measles outbreak. Florida has seen more than 140 cases so far this year.
"I truly believe that this is a dangerous bill, and I cannot vote for it," Harrell said.
In the end, the Senate passed the bill. But a House version never advanced, and the effort died in the regular legislative session that concluded March 13.
"We were disappointed that we did not get a bill that was to eliminate all vaccine mandates here in Florida. Instead, we got a bill that did a few things that we liked," said Maija Hahn, who leads the Florida chapter of Children's Health Defense, a nonprofit launched in 2018 by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now the secretary of U.S. Health and Human Services.
She still holds out hope that something could pop up in a special session on the budget this month.
"If everything is dead, I can say that this year was a very big disappointment. Very big," Hahn said.
The Florida chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics was involved in lobbying legislators against lifting vaccine mandates.
"There was a lot of lobbying, frankly, on both sides," chapter vice president Dr. Jennifer Takagishi said.
The Senate debate, while heated at times, "felt very one-sided in that as a legislator, you should be representing the majority of your constituents, and instead they're siding with a small minority," she added.
A variety of polls show broad support for vaccines, on the order of 8 in 10 people, largely across party lines.
"What we're seeing is, especially for certain childhood vaccines, like MMR (measles, mumps and rubella), parents want vaccine mandates for kids in schools," said Jen Kates, a senior vice president at KFF, a nonpartisan health policy organization in Washington. "They support these vaccines. They support protecting their kids through these mandates. And that includes Florida parents."
An Associated Press analysis found at least 350 anti-vaccine bills were introduced nationwide last year. Most haven't passed.
The movement's most powerful advocates in Florida include DeSantis, whose term as governor ends Jan. 5. Ladapo, who was appointed by DeSantis, could soon follow.
But people on both sides say the fight is far from over, with mistrust of the medical establishment still running high after the COVID-19 pandemic.
It was an honor to meet Barbara Loe Fisher (@NVICLoeDown) today after her presentation. Her work with the National Vaccine Information Center helped lay the foundation for the informed consent and parental rights movement we continue today. pic.twitter.com/kVmQIsQVR6
— Joseph A. Ladapo, MD, PhD (@FLSurgeonGen) March 16, 2026
"There are many more people now who have skepticism about the wisdom of public health policy and law. And I don't think that that's going to disappear. I think it's going to grow," said Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center. She has been working to end mandates since 1982.
"We've been seeing this movement in state legislatures toward protecting the informed consent ethic when it comes to vaccination. And how do you do that? With regard to vaccination, you allow people to make a voluntary decision. You either remove the mandate, or at the very least, you secure flexible medical, religious and conscientious belief exemptions in the law."
Part of the Florida Senate bill included how it would have required parents who opt in to vaccines, as recommended by their doctors, to get additional "medical information" about the shots. Parents opting out would not be required to get any medical information or counseling.
"If it provided information both ways — we want you to just be educated period, whether you choose to vaccinate or not vaccinate — I would say, OK, maybe there's some validity here," said Chriss. "But to only require that information, seemingly to deter parents who have decided to vaccinate their children from doing so? It feels very disingenuous."
And there's a lesson there for people in other states, she said.
"I truly think the only thing that has maybe deterred, or maybe just slowed down this process in Florida is the overwhelming number of people that oppose this sort of anti-science removal of vaccine mandates," Chriss added.
Ladapo did not respond to a request for an interview from WUSF, but he briefly acknowledged the situation at an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation in March.
"We have received a lot of pushback, and, you know, push as they might, the positions that we've taken here [are] absolutely the correct moral position," Ladapo said. "I think it's going to work out in the way that it should."
Ladapo's posts lately on social media have increasingly focused on healthy eating, testing candy and baby formula for toxins, and against pesticide use in agriculture.
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