OAN Staff James Meyers
1:53 PM – Friday, March 7, 2025
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his wife Casey have called on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to stop recommending the COVID-19 vaccine for children, as well as for the state legislature to permanently prohibit mRNA mandates and to add vaccination status protections to the Patient’s Bill of Rights.
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“Guided by common sense and sound science, Florida has led the way in protecting patients’ rights. Now is the time to secure these protections and do even more to defend medical freedom,” said DeSantis (R-Fla.). “Let’s keep Florida the beacon of freedom in health care, where the rights of all patients are enshrined permanently in law.”
“Today, Governor DeSantis, Surgeon General Ladapo, and I called on the Florida Legislature to make permanent the prohibitions against the COVID mRNA vaccine mandate,” said First Lady Casey DeSantis. “Florida stood in the breach to protect people during COVID, now it’s time to make sure these protections last.”
“I am deeply grateful to Governor Ron and First Lady Casey DeSantis for continuing to put the needs and rights of Floridians first,” said State Surgeon General Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo. “These proposals will strengthen the sovereignty of patients, and we look forward to advancing these issues with our federal partners at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.”
The call to ban mRNA vaccine mandates by DeSantis is a law that already exists in the Sunshine State but is set to expire in June.
DeSantis said he has no idea why the Legislature added an expiration date in the bill, but he is calling on lawmakers to extend the ban and make it permanent.
“We cannot allow those protections to evaporate,” he said as the Legislature reconvened for the first week of the Regular Session.
The vaccination status protections would prohibit physicians from denying treatment to anyone based on their vaccination status.
In the past few years, lawsuits sprung up by Disney World employees, firefighters and others who were terminated because they refused to get vaccinated during the pandemic.
“I’d be talking to like these firefighters, these guys have been on the front lines and during COVID, they were doing things to help people. Many of them got exposed. That’s just part of the job. They did it,” DeSantis said. “They didn’t want to take mRNA, and so they were going to lose their job. It was like a big contest.”
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