MONTGOMERY — Legislation making it easier for parents to claim a religious exemption for a vaccine requirement passed the Senate by a 26-5 margin on Thursday.
The bill by State Sen. Arthur Orr (R-Decatur) would specify that a parent or guardian's written declaration is sufficient documentation to exempt his or her child from a vaccine requirement for religious reasons.
"It's going to streamline the process for allowing religious exemptions for parents and guardians for their children and families that may have religious exemptions," Orr told reporters on Thursday. "This is the law. We didn't expand the law. All we did was streamline the process, and we took out of the process having to go to the health department to get a piece of paper that they have to give you anyway. It is not a discretionary function. It's a mandatory function that they have to give you the religious exemption papers so why are we doing that? Let's just let parents affirm that they have a religious exemption as they go to the schools and put that in writing for the schools and admit the child."
Orr continued, "Using aborted fetal tissue in those vaccinations is a true problem for a good number of people."
The bill passed the Senate in 2024 but didn't make it through the House.
"I hope the House will be receptive and that we'll get it through this year," Orr said.
The five 'no' votes on the bill were from Democrats. It was the only bill passed on the 18th day of the legislative session by the Senate due to filibustering from State Sen. Rodger Smitherman (D-Birmingham). There are twelve days left in the 2025 legislative session.
Smitherman told reporters on Thursday that he was filibustering because Senate Republican leadership had not placed Democrat-sponsored bills on the Senate agenda for a vote and had cut Jefferson County projects from the proposed General Fund budget passed by the House on Thursday.
Smitherman said, "The first problem is that we had an agenda, and it had none of our bills on it."
"We had zero bills on there. I've talked about that; this is probably my third or fourth straight day, and it was not addressed. We can't be passing bills if we're not going to have an opportunity to have our bills presented to the full Senate to be moved on to the House. That's the first thing. The second thing is the (General Fund) budget in the House. It may have had more in it, but it had six things cut from Jefferson County. Zeroed out. Yet you had other things from other counties increased, so that's no justification," Smitherman said. "I'll let you all make the determination of what I'm saying, but simply, you had things like the Civil Rights Institute zeroed out. You had the Jazz Hall of Fame zeroed out. All those are in Birmingham. Those speak for themselves. What they provide, information they provide, and who they show. Anytime that there's a situation like that and they're cut out then I'm the senator for that district. It's my job to get it put back in, so that's what I'm doing."
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