Lawyer who represented RFK Jr., anti-vaccine group represents plaintiffs in WV vaccine lawsuit

by Lori Kersey, West Virginia Watch
September 25, 2025

BECKLEY, W.Va. — Aaron Siri stood at a podium in a third-floor courtroom of the Raleigh County Courthouse in Beckley earlier this month. Consulting a legal pad of notes, the attorney cross examined Dr. Cathy Slemp, who had testified earlier that morning.

“Doctor, what’s the federal Vaccines for Children Program?” he asked the former state health officer.

“It’s a program that the federal government does, that they have federal contracts for vaccines that allows states to purchase off those contracts so that it’s at a lower cost,” she answered.

Just two days earlier, Siri was in Washington, D.C., testifying before the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations during a hearing entitled “How the corruption of science has impacted public perception and policies regarding vaccines.”

Siri, a New York-based attorney, has represented federal health secretary and vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the anti-vaccine Informed Consent Action Network. Last fall, he reportedly helped Kennedy pick health officials for President Donald Trump’s administration. He’s also petitioned the federal government to suspend or remove approval for the use of the polio vaccine in infants and toddlers until a safety trial is done. 

Now, Siri is part of a legal team representing parents of school children in Raleigh County in their lawsuit against the West Virginia and Raleigh County boards of education. The families are suing the school boards to allow their students to attend class with a religious exemption to the state’s school immunization requirements. 

All states require children attending school to be vaccinated for certain infectious diseases, including polio, chickenpox and measles. West Virginia is one of only five states in the country that do not allow children to opt out of the requirements because of religious or philosophical objections to the shots. Gov. Patrick Morrisey seeks to change that. 

The governor issued an executive order early this year requiring the state to allow religious exemptions. The executive order — based on the state’s 2023 Equal Protection for Religion Act — has not been rescinded even though the West Virginia Legislature earlier this year rejected a bill that would have put the exemptions in state code. 

Raleigh Circuit Judge Michael Froble in July issued a preliminary injunction allowing the children in the case to attend class with a religious exemption to the state’s school vaccination requirements. Attorneys representing the families have asked the judge for class action status. 

When West Virginia Watch asked Siri about his interest in the lawsuit, and in West Virginia’s compulsory school vaccination law generally, Siri referred a reporter to his Dec. 20, 2022 post on the social media platform X, to his recent congressional testimony, and to his book, “Vaccines, Amen: The Religion of Vaccines.”

“Mandates are the tool of bullies, criminals and dictators,” he wrote in the post. “If a patient refuses a medical product after being conveyed its benefits and risks, then that is called informed consent. They were informed and did not consent. Mandating over this objection is immoral and illiberal.”

He added in an email, “Protecting everybody’s right to [informed] consent and medical liberty is important no matter what state they are in.”

While Morrisey has expressed support for the families suing the boards of education, the state is not compensating Siri for his work representing the plaintiffs, according to Morrisey’s office. 

Froble held a two-day hearing on a permanent injunction in the case on Sept. 10 and 11. 

Attorneys and the judge heard from Slemp, who argued that the state’s school compulsory vaccination law — without religious or philosophical exemptions — is the best way to protect the state’s public health goals. Even a small number of religious or philosophical exemptions would increase disease, she said. 

The school board has appealed the judge’s preliminary ruling to the state Supreme Court, which has signaled that it would consider it no sooner than early next year. 

The hearing on a permanent injunction in the case is expected to continue in Froble’s Beckley courtroom’s Oct. 8 and 9. The judge has subpoenaed the state’s current acting state health officer, Dr. Mark McDaniel, who agrees with Morrisey on religious exemptions, to testify during that hearing. 

YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.

SUPPORT

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.