The Real Immorality Is Allowing Preventable Diseases to Spread in Florida Classrooms

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo recently declared that vaccine mandates are “immoral,” even likening them to “slavery.” In doing so, he did more than disregard a century of public health wisdom—he inverted the very meaning of moral responsibility.

What, exactly, is immoral about protecting children from preventable diseases? What is coercive about ensuring that a child undergoing chemotherapy can attend school without facing a potentially fatal measles exposure? What is “slavery” about safeguarding infants, immunocompromised students, and pregnant teachers from illnesses that spread before symptoms appear?

The truth is simple: vaccine mandates are not an infringement on freedom—they are an expression of collective duty. They exist because infectious diseases do not stay neatly within the boundaries of “individual choice.” One unvaccinated child can expose dozens of others without anyone’s consent or awareness. That is why schools, which are compulsory, have always had a responsibility to maintain minimum safety standards.

Ladapo and Governor Ron DeSantis frame immunization requirements as assaults on “individual sovereignty.” But a public school is not a private island. It is a shared space where the rights of one family intersect with the rights of every other. Parents have wide latitude in directing their children’s medical care, but they do not have the right to make decisions that endanger other people’s children. Freedom does not include the freedom to spread preventable disease.

The rhetoric of “slavery” is especially reckless. Vaccine mandates are not chains. They are the reason diseases like polio, diphtheria, and congenital rubella no longer devastate American families. They are the reason measles outbreaks remain the exception rather than the norm. Florida’s immunization requirements have protected millions of children for decades. Dismantling them would not promote liberty; it would promote outbreaks.

Eliminating school vaccine mandates would mean more quarantines, more school closures, higher healthcare costs, and greater risk for the most vulnerable among us. It would mean turning our backs on the very principle that makes Ppublic health work: shared responsibility.

If there is anything “immoral” in this debate, it is choosing ideology over the safety of children. Public health is not coercion. It is compassion, science, and stewardship. Florida’s leaders should remember that before they dismantle protections that generations of parents have relied upon.

Our children deserve better than political theater. They deserve classrooms that are safe—because we had the courage to keep them that way.