At stake was Senate Bill 277, signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown on a wave of concern that “herd immunity” among California children was compromised by a growing anti-vaccination trend. Coauthored by state Sens. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, and Ben Allen, D-Redondo Beach, SB277 “will require all children entering kindergarten to be vaccinated unless a doctor certifies that a child has a medical condition, such as allergies, preventing it,” as the Los Angeles Daily News summarized the law.

Missing the mark

After submitting signatures gathered in the hopes of meeting the legal threshold of adequate public support, organizers behind the would-be measure discovered that their numbers had fallen short: “They turned in some 228,000 signatures on petitions for a referendum to overturn the measure, far short of the number needed to qualify it for next year’s ballot,” as the Los Angeles Times reported. “Referendum supporters needed the signatures of 365,880 registered voters by Monday to place the measure before state voters in November 2016.”

Efforts to meet the requirements were bedeviled by the shoestring character of the operation. “While the campaign deployed paid signature gatherers in the final stretch before the deadline, it was largely a volunteer effort,” according to the Sacramento Bee, “a tough task given that successful initiative campaigns typically cost millions of dollars.”

Citing internal documentation, the Bee noted that some California counties weren’t represented at all in the final tally. “Organizers in six counties did not submit any signatures by the deadline, according to an initial survey of raw data from the California secretary of state’s office. While the organizers’ spreadsheet contains estimates for large population centers like Orange County, Los Angeles County and Riverside County, they did not have an estimate for 16 counties in addition to the six the secretary of state said did not submit signatures,” the paper reported.

Raising allegations

But one of the foremost political figures behind the movement to restore the personal belief exemption to mandatory child vaccinations alleged that the signature-gathering effort had fallen victim to foul play. “The leading proponent of the effort, former Republican Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, said in an email Monday that volunteers were coerced and threatened while collecting signatures,” according to the Associated Press. “Donnelly did not return repeated messages inquiring about the effort’s chances but said in his email that he was proud of the volunteers who worked on the campaign ‘whatever the outcome is.'” Donnelly said the push “was sabotaged from without and within by powerful forces from its very inception, but we never gave up and we never gave in.”

Although Donnelly had gained notoriety of late as an outspoken gubernatorial candidate, his charges have yet to faze supporters of the stringent vaccination mandate. In remarks to KOVR Sacramento, Pan said he supported “the right to pursue a referendum,” according to the Daily News. But Pan also told reporters he was “sure the voters of California are not interested in letting a privileged few take away the rights of all Californians to be safe from preventable disease,” the AP noted.

Plan B

As the deadline for submitting signatures neared, some anti-vaccination activists created what could be a second opportunity to accomplish objectives similar to the hoped-for referendum. In a recent message posted to Facebook, the group announced that they had filed for a so-called Parental Rights Constitutional Amendment Initiative. “The measure was filed now in part because the filing fee for initiatives is going up Jan. 1 from $200 to $2,000,” the post said, according to the Los Angeles Times. “Supporters have six months to collect signatures for an initiative, far longer than 90 days provided for a referendum.”

Sweeping changes

As CalWatchdog.com previously reported, state Sens. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, and Ben Allen, D-Santa Monica, had to rewrite key passages of the bill’s language in order to head off potential constitutional challenges to its treatment of kids without the specified vaccinations.

The bulk of the original bill remained intact, however, sweeping away California’s longstanding and generous rules permitting parents to keep their children vaccine-free. “Several Republican senators tried to stall the bill by introducing a series of amendments that would have reinserted the religious exemption and required labeling of vaccine ingredients,” according to the Sacramento Bee. But Democrats moved swiftly to shut them down.

For some critics, barring unvaccinated children from public school remained a bone of contention. “It’s clear that a large portion of concerned parents will likely withhold their children from public schools because of their concerns or lack of comfort from the vaccination process,” said GOP state Sen. John Moorlach, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

But some carveouts were set to remain. “The legislation only addresses families that will soon enroll their children in school,” as Newsweek observed. “Under the proposed law, children who aren’t currently immunized are not required to get vaccinated until seventh grade. The law still allows families to opt out due to medical reasons, such as a history of allergies to vaccines and inherited or acquired immune disorders or deficiencies.”

The so-called grandfather clause represented a major concession to parents’ groups, which had succeeded in stalling Pan and Allen’s legislation once before. Now, as the San Jose Mercury News reported, “more than 13,000 children who have had no vaccinations by first grade won’t have to get their shots until they enter seventh grade. And nearly 10,000 seventh-graders who today aren’t fully vaccinated may be able to avoid future shots because the state does not always require them after that grade.”

Regulatory momentum

Despite the lenience built into the advancing legislation, the pro-vaccine logic that propelled it has already increased momentum for an even more assertive approach to enforcing inoculation.

As KQED News has noted, “two other vaccine-related bills are making their way through the Legislature a bit more quietly. One would require preschool and child care workers to have certain vaccinations; another seeks to improve vaccination rates for 2-year-olds.”

“If SB792 becomes law, California will be the first state in the country to require that all preschool and child care workers be immunized against measles, pertussis and the flu.”

Supporters of the ratcheted-up regulation sought to head off more controversy by downplaying the invasiveness and inconvenience of their approach. “We certainly aren’t out to arrest people who aren’t vaccinated,” said Kat DeBurgh, executive director of the Health Officers Association of California, a group that sponsored SB792. “We wanted to make this just like any other violation of code that an inspector would look for. If you don’t remediate, then there is a fine to the day care center.”

At the same time, pro-vaccination analysts have speculated that the Golden State will save money the more it ensures vaccination. Referring to a recent study showing that Iowa’s health care spending would double if it added a personal belief exemption, Tara Haelle suggested that California’s “health care cost savings would be far more substantial” once its exemption was eliminated, although, she conceded, “no thorough analyses are currently available.”

“It’s a lack of respect,” House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi said of why Republicans continue to press for restrictions on reproductive rights and undermine what she described as “choice issues.” “Respect for our judgment, our dignity, respect for our sentiment of responsibility.”

Yet, marginalized activists who support maintaining a personal belief exemption from mandatory vaccinations say that Democratic lawmakers aren’t respecting their right to choose. Opponents of Senate Bill 277 protested outside of the Anaheim Convention Center Saturday, with homemade signs and loud chants echoing the party’s position on health choice. Rather than gain acceptance from a party that champions marginalized groups, opponents of SB277 found themselves facing derisive comments from convention delegates.

“They (California Democrats) are definitely being hypocritical on this issue,” said Aaron Mills, a member of the California Coalition for Health Choice. “Democrats usually champion for the minorities. When it comes to this group, it’s “just go away and stop complaining.”

He added, “You can’t force somebody to take a product with known risks. … I don’t really feel compelled to vaccinate my day-old infant for a sexually transmitted disease.”

SB277: Reframing the debate

The debate over California’s immunization requirements began in January, following a measles outbreak at Disneyland, which coincidentally is just down the block from this weekend’s convention. As of March, California public health officials had confirmed 133 measles cases since December, according to National Public Radio.

The Disneyland measles outbreak encouraged Senator Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, to introduce SB277, a bill to end the personal belief exemption which gives parents the power to opt-out of mandatory vaccinations for schoolchildren.

For months, opponents of the legislation have stumbled in their public rhetoric and legislative strategy. Some of the bill’s opponents tracked – arguably stalked – a lobbyist throughout the Capitol. Lawmakers and their staff members were inconvenienced by lengthy committee hearings. This past Thursday, the bill passed the state Senate on a 25-10 vote, with only two Democrats opposed.

However, at this weekend’s California Democratic Party state convention, concerned parents refined their argument to a message of choice.

“Are you aware that California Senate Bill 277 is moving its way through legislation right now that will remove your right to choose on vaccines?” reads a flyer distributed by protestors. “Where there’s a risk, there must be choice!”

Another handout asks, “Are California Democrats a party of choice or force?”

Both of those messages mirror the words of the California Democratic Party’s official platform, which states, “We proudly and vigorously support a woman’s right to choose how to use her mind, her body and her time.”

Democratic Senators prioritize public safety over choice

State Senator Ben Allen, D-Santa Monica, a principal co-author of the bill, has argued that public safety should trump choice.

“The high number of unvaccinated students is jeopardizing public health not only in schools but in the broader community,” Allen said in a press release earlier this year.” We need to take steps to keep our schools safe and our students healthy.”

Allen’s arguments don’t sit well with some Democrats, who see it as government intervening in their personal health decisions.

“Never in a million years did I think my fellow Democrats would vote to take away my constitutional rights as a parent,” read one Democratic woman’s homemade sign. “Vaccination decisions are between a parent and their doctor, not the government. Opposition to SB277 will not go away even if it passed.”

During Saturday’s rally, supporters of the personal belief exemption chanted, ” We’re not going away! We’re not going away!” Yet, some Republicans are hoping that the issue could drive parents to leave the Democratic Party. A few members of the California Republican Assembly set up a table near the rally with a sign indicating their support for parental rights.

SB277 Opponents: Don’t call us anti-vaxxers

In addition to their frustration with Democrats abandoning “choice,” opponents of SB277 say that the party’s elected officials are being disrespectful to their cause by using the pejorative term, “anti-vaxxer.”

“This media stigma that is attached to it,” Mills, a member of the Democratic Party and opponent of mandatory vaccination, explained why he objected to the term. “It might be the most loathed group in the country. It’s definitely a minority group that no one looks fondly upon.”

According to Google search trends, there has been a dramatic spike in use of the term since the Disneyland measles outbreak. So, what should people call them?

“We’re not anti-anything,” Mills said. “We’re for health choice.”

California Democratic Party: Health Choice Rally

As CalWatchdog reported previously, supporters of SB 277 discovered that its original wording could be interpreted as unconstitutionally depriving some children of an education.

Last month, the ACLU began raising the constitutional alarm. Kevin G. Baker, legislative director of the ACLU of California’s Center for Advocacy and Policy, wrote the bill’s sponsors to suggest some possible alternatives, according to the Los Angeles Times: 

“In his letter, Baker suggested that a 16-month-old state law, AB 2109, should be given more of a chance to work before taking such a drastic step. That legislation requires health professionals to discuss the benefits and risks of immunization with parents before they are allowed to file belief exemptions, and it has already led to an increase in vaccination rates.“

Lawmakers, however, did not respond. Rather than taking such a circuitous path, they focused on honing SB 277 to a point where the force of the constitutional objections could simply be blunted. The core provisions of SB 277 went unchanged as legislators retooled its language. Co-authored by state Sens. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, and Ben Allen, D-Santa Monica, the bill “would eliminate personal belief and religious exemptions for vaccines, and unvaccinated children could not attend public or private school in California,” as the San Jose Mercury News noted. Students barred from school attendance would, under the bill’s requirements, be homeschooled.

Narrow changes, big consequences

To evade the possibility of selective educational discrimination, however, Pan and Allen rewrote the bill to permit broader access to educational resources for unvaccinated kids. Summarizing the changes, California Healthline reported that one new provision allowed them to “enroll in private home-schooling programs that serve multiple families, rather than programs that serve just one family,” while another enabled them to “[p]articipate in independent study projects that are overseen by school districts but do not include classroom time.”

Moreover, a small but significant carve-out was created to allay some persistent concerns about the scope of legislative authority over vaccination. Legislators tweaked the bill “to include a new provision that would limit vaccinations to only those 10 vaccines currently required by California Department of Public Health,” according to the Bee. “Parents would be allowed to obtain a personal belief exemption for any vaccine added in the future.” Under state law, the personal belief exemption has been understood to encompass the religious belief exemption.

Although the changes impacting private schooling and independent study made the more immediate difference in terms of the bill’s prospects, the vaccine-limiting provision carried much greater legal significance. Critics of the bill had argued strenuously against eliminating California’s religious and personal belief exemptions altogether, without regard to changes in medical opinion or future legislative requirements.

More hurdles

Although SB 277 in amended form has now cleared the Senate Education Committee and will find stronger support as it heads to the Senate Judiciary Committee, further changes were predicted before its final form takes shape. “Several senators said additional amendments will likely be needed as the bill moves forward to ensure that unvaccinated kids are not denied the education guaranteed to them by the California Constitution,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “Several lawmakers said they would like to see more school options for those who aren’t immunized, other than home school and independent study.”

Additionally, the Chronicle reported, the bill may need approval by the Senate Appropriations Committee before moving to the full Senate, and requires five affirmative votes in the Judiciary Committee to proceed. “The five Democrats on the committee,” however, “are either supporters of the bill or have previously voted in favor of it.”

“In requiring vaccinations as a prerequisite for enrolling children in school, detractors said, the bill would legalize institutional discrimination,” the Sacramento Bee reported.

According to the Associated Press, some lawmakers warned “it could unconstitutionally create a second-class by depriving unvaccinated children of an adequate education.”

Fierce opposition

Bipartisan support for Senate Bill 277, which would scrap the Golden State’s personal belief exemption and require immunization for school admittance, has remained strong. But although the Senate Health Committee recently cleared the bill in a 6-2 vote, the addition of the discrimination objection gave new force to opposition leveled by anti-vaccination parents and groups.

As a result, SB277 has stalled, only to return once legislators are convinced that the new questions have been conclusively answered.

State Senator Richard Pan

The bill’s sponsors, state Sens. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, and Ben Allen, D-Santa Monica, have weathered criticism before. As CalWatchdog.com noted previously, party affiliations have been a poor guide to how Californians have responded to the vaccination controversy: Some Republicans have strongly supported tightening exemptions, while others haven’t, and Democrats have ranged from supporting the status quo to advocating an end to all exemptions.

But in recent weeks, the two Senate Democrats have faced a barrage of criticism from parents and activists able to fight the bill’s progress in public. This week, Pan and Allen took to the editorial page of the Fresno Bee to defend SB277.

“We respect the very personal decisions that parents have to make for their children,” they wrote. “But all children deserve to be safe at school, and the personal belief exemption is now endangering the

State Senator Ben Allen

public. Senate Bill 277 will not remove a parent’s choice to vaccinate his or her child. However, choice brings with it responsibility, and under the measure, parents who decide not to vaccinate will have to home-school their children.”

Parental threats

As the San Jose Mercury News observed, SB277 began to take fire from objectors who threatened to deprive schools of enrollment money:

“Parents like San Jose resident Elaine Shtein are being encouraged to bring a son or daughter to stand with them before the eight-member Senate Education Committee on Wednesday with a warning: If the bill passes, they pledge to yank their children out of public and private schools, and home-school them, something they believe will deprive both the state and private school systems of money for every student enrolled.”

According to the Mercury News, education analysts suspected that the impact on school budgets would be relatively marginal. But regardless of how little money schools lose, the prospect of a constitutional challenge to SB277 was enough to spook lawmakers into sending Pan and Allen back to the drawing board.

A “smarter approach”

Although Pan and Allen proceeded with some care in crafting a simple but focused bill, they nevertheless failed to anticipate the level of difficulty they faced in legislating tighter vaccination rules. Pro-vaccination critics warned that Sacramento’s strategy has ineptly fostered a legislative environment, turning each committee hearing on the elimination of the personal belief exemption into a media opportunity for absolutist anti-vaccine groups.

“A smarter approach would be to retain a narrow personal belief exemption in states that already have one and avoid the kind of polarizing fight that California is now having,” wrote Brendan Nyhan at the New York Times. “These states could tighten exemption rules as experts recommend to more appropriately strike the balance between parental choice and the health needs of the community. Given the potential risks that unvaccinated children pose to the community, the process of obtaining an exemption can be rigorous and demanding.”

It seems Los Angeles County is testing the old philosophical question: What if they gave an election and nobody came? The most populous county in the state had the lowest percentage turnout in last November’s election.

While 42 percent of state voters turned out for the general election, Los Angeles County turnout was only 31 percent. The last mayoral city election in Los Angeles saw a turnout of a mere 23 percent.

The California Senate and Assembly election committees are chaired, respectively, by Sen. Ben Allen, D-Santa Monica, and Assemblyman Sebastian Ridley-Thomas, D-Culver City. The chairs called a joint oversight committee hearing on Feb. 20 to look for the reasons and solutions of the extremely low turnout in Los Angeles County. YouTube here.

The answer just might be a feeling of powerlessness among voters.

Loyola Law professor Jessica Levinson told the committee the low turnout in Los Angeles elections could be a case of voter apathy. Los Angeles is not a political town, she said. Everyone knows when the Super Bowl and the Oscars occur, but they don’t know when an election happens.

Many suggestions were made at the hearing on why there was a low voter turnout:

• Voters believe their vote doesn’t matter;
• The size of the county takes away the personalization of politics;
• Lack of civic education in the schools;
• Frequency of elections;
• Lack of an interesting ballot;
• Demographics in which the large minority populations which make up much of Los Angeles County’s potential voters have a history of not voting.

Major obstacles

All those items contribute to the low voter turnout. But are there really major obstacles to prevent voters from coming out if they cared to?

Some of those testifying to the committee seemed to think so. Common Cause’s Kathay Feng said the progressives who set up the rules for stand-alone local elections not only wanted a focus on local government, but they were also racist. They didn’t want certain people to vote and they were successful by setting up elections in off years.

Feng, who serves on the committee to move the Los Angeles city elections to coincide with national elections, a measure which will appear on the city ballot in March, said the convenience to the voters of combining elections will bump up the voting totals by as much as a third.

Still, Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute at Cal State, Los Angeles, may have touched on the reason citizens don’t engage in local elections. He argued that people believe the only election that really leads to change is the presidential election.

If that is so, then many of the suggestions made to increase the vote will probably only do so on the margins.

Change agents

Even if voting is made as convenient as possible — as Jessica Levinson suggested the time might come when everyone can simply vote by pressing some button on their iPhone — an important question remains: Do voters think those votes for local candidates create change?

Do citizens think they have the power through their votes to alter the direction of government? Or do they believe the institutions are so controlled and manipulated by insiders that voting is pointless?

There were higher turnouts in the past when it was arguably more inconvenient to vote.

The key to bringing voters to the polls, rather than constantly devising new systems to make it easier to vote, is for the voters to see themselves as important participants in governing.