Image Credit: Connecticut Post/Hearst Newspapers / Contributor / Getty 
Hundreds of Connecticut parents, medical experts and community members testified Wednesday in a 14-hour state legislative hearing on two bills that would expand the state’s authority over vaccine recommendations.
The majority of those who spoke at the hearing said they opposed the bills.
Testimony ran past midnight as more than 200 of the 550-plus people who signed up delivered oral statements.
More than 2,000 people also submitted written comments, many specifically opposing a provision in Senate Bill (SB) 450 that would strengthen the state’s ban on religious exemptions to vaccine requirements for school.
Both bills, SB 450 and House Bill (HB) 5044 — proposed by Gov. Ned Lamont — would expand the state health department’s power to set immunization recommendations for adults, regardless of recommendations issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The proposed legislation would also ensure insurance coverage of vaccines recommended by the health department and allow the state to purchase vaccines from sources other than the CDC.
“As a healthcare professional, it concerns me that the person in charge of the health of Connecticut residents [Public Health Commissioner Manisha Juthani] is appointed, not elected,” said chiropractor Jackie Flynn.
She added:
“She doesn’t enact any measures other than vaccines to ‘keep our residents healthy’ … Why? Is it because we are beholden to the vaccine manufacturers to keep their profits up?
“All I hear is ‘vaccines vaccines vaccines.’ And it’s ironic that these bills and previous ones circumvent the religious freedoms of citizens to an extent that vaccine ideology almost seems like a religion in itself.”
Eva Jimenez, a parent and teacher from Newington, asked the committee, “Will you ram this legislation through despite overwhelming opposition from the public?”
State lawmakers can’t ‘modify the First Amendment,’ attorney says
In 2021, Connecticut lawmakers voted to eliminate religious exemptions to school vaccinerequirements. In 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) denied a legal challenge to that law.
However, the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), similar to the federal law by the same name, contains a provision that may allow people to challenge the law that eliminated the exemptions.
SB 450 proposes to eliminate that possibility. It “modifies existing laws regarding religious exercise” to ensure that eliminating the religious vaccine exemption doesn’t legally violate state protections to religious freedom under RFRA.
In written comments, attorney Rick Jaffe argued that passing SB 450 would violate First Amendment protections. “The legislature has the authority to amend its own RFRA. What it cannot do is modify the First Amendment.”
A recent SCOTUS decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor, a religious freedom case, strengthened those protections, Jaffe said. SCOTUS ruled that if a law puts a serious burden on someone’s religious practice in the context of required schooling, the government has to meet a very high bar to justify it. This high bar is called “strict scrutiny.”
Connecticut has one of the highest vaccine uptake rates in the country. It is one of many states that indicated in January that it won’t follow the CDC’s new childhood vaccine recommendations.
Lamont is one of 15 Democratic governors who launched the Governors Public Health Alliance, an initiative to coordinate their states’ public health efforts independently of national public healthagencies.
Wednesday’s hearing was a public comment session. The committee is expected to vote on the bills later this month, Eyewitness News reported. If passed, the proposals would go before the full legislature.
Attorney says proposed bills specifically target ongoing litigation
Democrats introduced the proposed exception to the state’s religious freedom act at the urging of Connecticut Attorney General William Tong.
Tong is in the midst of defending his state against a lawsuit seeking to reinstate the religious exemption, which was eliminated in 2021, the CT Insider reported.
During Wednesday’s hearing, attorney Lindy Urso, who represents plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said Connecticut’s SB 450 was designed specifically to target the lawsuit. “They are making it as bulletproof as they can so they can shut our lawsuit down,” Urso said.
“I have never seen in my 30 years [practicing law] a state — this state or any other state — pass a law in the middle specifically to affect the legislation that’s pending and been pending for four plus years. Never,” Lindy said during the hearing.
Urso represents three families from Orange, Greenwich and Stafford Springs who sued Lamont, Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker, and Public Health Commissioner Manisha Juthani in a bid to reinstate the religious exemption, according to CT Insider.
They allege that the 2021 repeal of religious exemptions violated state and federal protections on the free exercise of religion, including the state’s religious freedom law.
In 2024, the Connecticut Supreme Court dismissed its state and federal claims but upheld a pretrial ruling that an exception to the governmental immunity defense in its religious freedom law applied to the case. It allowed the case to proceed on that claim.
Urso said that Tong issued an opinion memo indicating he was confident the state’s decision to eliminate the religious exemption would pass the strict scrutiny required by its religious freedom law.
If that’s the case, Urso asked, “Why don’t they let it be put to the test?”
State Sen. Heather Somers, who spoke at the hearing, said she found it particularly concerning that the proposed bill explicitly states it would apply to any pending litigation — which would directly affect Urso’s case.
Urso said that even if the legislation passes, “We’re not going to go down without a fight.”
Watch the hearing here:
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