Home-schooling and state vaccination requirements

A paper by our own Art Caplan and Penn Law student Donya Khalili in the current issue of The Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics explores the complicated landscape of vaccination requirements for home-schoolers. Titled "Off the Grid: Vaccinations among Home-schooled Children" (free abstract, subscription for full-text), the paper argues that extending state vaccination requirements to home-schooled children is ethically appropriate and legally justifiable.

From the authors' conclusion:

"While homeschooling and childhood vaccination laws vary substantially among states, the most direct way to encourage more parents to have their children vaccinated is to require that homeschoolers follow the same rules of mandatory immunization and standard exemptions that parents of public schooled students must follow. With improved vaccination rates, all Americans will be more protected against disease, and it is critical to the health and safety of our nation that we protect the health and safety of homeschooled children."