Four things I would have preferred the House do this week

1.  Move forward the bar on religious exemptions for vaccinations. Just this week, the West Virginia bar withstood a federal appeals challenge. Just today, the AP is noting that babies too young for the MMR vaccine become "sitting ducks" in an outbreak. Given the anti-vaccine push by the federal government (as much as the courts are doing what they can), we cannot afford cracks in our community immunity. 
   
   
2. Do literally anything at all about Massachusetts being the only state in the country that has Democrats in charge of both chambers and the Governor's office and has a 287(g) contract with ICE. 
   Seriously. Anything at all. You could even pass a bill to make it illegal, like Maryland or Virginia, as that's the whole reason we have a legislature: making laws. 
   
   
3. Pass legislation protecting our immigrant neighbors from being preyed upon by the federal government, like the PROTECT Act, which passed out of committee two weeks ago, yet somehow was not seen as being as urgent as that bill on cell phones. I have been told they passed this? That missed my radar. One hopes it receives half the urgency from the rest of the process that this appears to have
    
4. Move forward the legislation that updates how inflation is calculated in the foundation budget, and make it effective for FY27, better aligning the foundation budget with district costs (and perhaps keeping us from the mistake of digging even bigger hold harmless aid holes).
   
   

please enjoy these pansies from my walk to work in Boston

Applying Mahmoud v. Taylor to vaccines is alarming

 On Monday, the Supreme Court sent a case challenging New York State's ending of religious exemptions for vaccines back to the appeals court " for further consideration in light of Mahmoud v. Taylor."

Mahmoud, of course, was the decision that allows parents to exempt their children from, well, basically anything in a school, on religious grounds. 

Slate covers the issue here well: 

Unfortunately, Mahmoud’s author, Justice Samuel Alito, wrote the opinion so sweepingly that this interpretation is entirely plausible. He evinced no concern for the rights of other students—like, say, the children of LGBTQ+ parents who might feel stigmatized by the removal of books that depict families like theirs. And he contemplated no clear limits to parents’ freedom “to direct the religious upbringing of their children.” Instead, he indicated that when parents’ faith-based demands conflict with democratically enacted education policies, it is the parents who must win out and the contested policies that must yield. So the Amish plaintiffs in Miller v. McDonald are not off base when they say that Mahmoud establishes their right to send their kids to school unvaccinated. Alito’s decision is so recklessly capacious that it arguably allows parents to challenge even the most basic school-safety measures on religious grounds.

Mahmoud did at least acknowledge that infringements upon this newfound First Amendment right may survive if they are “narrowly tailored” to serve a “compelling government interest.” The plaintiffs argue that the existence of New York’s medical exemption proves that there is no compelling interest in overturning its religious exemption, insisting that these opt-outs are analogous. But they are not: As the 2nd Circuit explained, there is “a difference in magnitude” between the frequency of religious and medical exemption, with families claiming the former vastly more often than the latter. Medical exemptions are also easier to police, since states can require licensed doctors to explain why each child has a legitimate need to forgo vaccination. Public health experts have shown that religious exemptions were linked to recent outbreaks—like New York’s measles epidemic—while medical exemptions were not.

In a week in which South Carolina reports what they've termed an "accelerating" measles outbreak  and Connecticut has just reported their first case in four years, it would certainly seem as if there is a compelling interest here. It is alarming that the Supreme Court would wonder otherwise.