Raleigh judge to continue with vaccine lawsuit proceedings, despite both sides asking him for pause

by Lori Kersey, West Virginia Watch
September 8, 2025

A Raleigh County judge overseeing two legal challenges in a battle over West Virginia’s school vaccination laws and religious freedom will move forward this week with a permanent injunction hearing, despite a request from opposite sides that he pause proceedings.

The state Supreme Court plans to take up the state Board of Education’s appeal of Raleigh Circuit Judge Michael Froble’s preliminary injunction in the lawsuit that Miranda Guzman and the families of two other students brought against the school board.

Froble ruled in July in favor of Guzman and the other families. They sued over the school board’s decision not to allow religious exemptions to the state’s mandatory school vaccination requirements. The judge’s preliminary ruling allows only the three students in the case to attend school with a religious exemption to the requirements.

The high court said it would take up the school board’s appeal no sooner than early next year.

The Raleigh County lawsuit has also been consolidated with a lawsuit filed in Kanawha County by Joshua Hess and Marisa Jackson, two parents of immunocompromised children, against the state Department of Health. That lawsuit seeks to stop the health department from issuing religious exemptions. Plaintiffs in the case are represented by the ACLU of West Virginia and Mountain State Justice.

Froble on Monday denied a joint motion filed Friday by attorneys representing both the school board and the families asking to hold off on further proceedings in the case in anticipation of the Supreme Court taking on the matter.

“Given that all parties in the Guzman matter, including Plaintiffs, see no avenue for statewide relief in this Guzman matter and given that there is a preliminary injunction in place allowing Plaintiffs’ children to attend school, all parties respectfully join in a request to stay this Guzman matter pending a decision from the Supreme Court on Defendants’ appeal,” the attorneys wrote.

Froble denied the request during a hearing with parties in the case on Monday morning.

All states require school children to be vaccinated against a number of infectious diseases including polio, measles and chickenpox. West Virginia has been one of only five in the country that do not allow children to opt out because of religious or philosophical objections to the shots. Gov. Patrick Morrisey issued an executive order in January requiring the state to allow religious exemptions. Morrisey has not rescinded the executive order despite the state Legislature this year rejecting a bill that would have established the exemptions in state code. Morrisey’s executive order is based on the state’s 2023 Equal Protection for Religion Act.

The West Virginia school board voted not to comply with Morrisey’s executive order and to instruct county boards of education to require all vaccines and allow only medical exemptions to those vaccination requirements.

State attorney general J.B. McCuskey filed an amicus brief in the case on Morrisey’s behalf. In it, Morrisey asked the judge to avoid considering the school vaccination law’s constitutionality. He also said the judge cannot issue a statewide injunction against the school board in the case, asked that he let his executive order stand and said that the judge should not create his own process for exemptions and responding to outbreaks.

“Here, it is not necessary to decide the vaccination law’s constitutionality,” McCuskey wrote in the brief. “Neither the Guzman Plaintiffs nor the Hess Plaintiffs have raised a constitutional challenge to the law. The Guzman Plaintiffs say the Board of Education’s no religious exemption policy, which is based on a flawed reading of the vaccination law, violates the EPRA [Equal Protection for Religion Act]. The Hess Plaintiffs say the Department of Health’s implementation of the executive order is illegal. The constitutionality of the vaccination law is, simply, not before the Court.”

The hearing is set for Wednesday and Thursday at 9 a.m. each day at the Raleigh County Judicial Center in Beckley.

West Virginia Watch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com.