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Medical freedom activists in New Jersey are urging residents to contact their state representatives and ask them to oppose sweeping changes to the state health code that would expand private school control over vaccines, increase health data collection and permanently shield some public health records from disclosure.
The New Jersey Department of Health (NJDOH) said the proposed changes, announced in August, “reorganize and streamline” health policies.
But health freedom advocates say the new rules concentrate power at the state level, remove control from individuals and reduce public accountability.
“Public health measures must be accountable to the people and their elected representatives, not dictated behind closed doors,” Stand for Health Freedom said in its call to action. The state has “gone too far,” it wrote, adding:
“When decisions are hidden from scrutiny, trust in government crumbles. This approach sets a dangerous precedent for unchecked bureaucratic control, where policies affecting children, families, and communities can be imposed without clear consent, oversight, or recourse.”
Lori Sebastian, an organizer with the Children’s Health Defense New Jersey Chapter, told The Defender that the changes are part of building a more robust surveillance state and limiting parental rights.
“What about the health of the children?” she asked. She said the NJDOH is hyper-focused on infectious diseases and vaccines, but fails to address chronic disease.
“Nowhere in this document did I ever see where they talked about evaluating the actual health of the children. Sometimes I think what’s missing is just as important as what is there,” she said.
Advocacy groups are calling on residents to ask their state representatives to protest the amendments to New Jersey Administrative Code, Title 8, Health Chapter 57, which governs communicable diseases and immunization. The public can submit comments on the proposed changes until Nov. 14.
DOH can enact the proposed regulations as written, modify them or withdraw the proposal. Sebastian said if legislators receive enough public comments, they will hold a public hearing on the issue.
Several health freedom groups in New Jersey are hoping to “flood the NJDOH with comments.”
Private schools could deny religious exemptions, add vaccine mandates
Under the proposal, private educational institutions — including preschools, childcare centers, K-12 schools and colleges — could adopt vaccination requirements that go beyond current state mandates.
Educational institutions could also deny religious exemptions for vaccines, which critics say would give private administrators authority that is traditionally reserved for public health agencies.
The amended language says, “notwithstanding a person’s claim of a religious exemption, the subchapter would not limit a private facility’s authority to exclude a person from attendance who has not received an immunization that this subchapter requires” or an additional immunization consistent with recommendations made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).
The change is an attempt to chip away at New Jersey’s religious exemption for vaccination, Sebastian said. In 2020, a bill to end the religious exemption failed, after significant opposition from groups who protested at the statehouse.
The NJDOH’s document proposes to align the state’s immunization requirements with recommendations made by ACIP and those made by “other nationally recognized health care advocacy organizations.”
No changes to the required vaccines are currently proposed, but the new rules requiring adherence to schedules proposed by ACIP and other organizations could affect immunization requirements in the future.
Critics warn that this alignment could weaken public input and reduce the legislative oversight that states usually require for such changes.
Opponents also noted that the document’s reference to other advocacy organizations stands out, especially given recent controversies over ACIP recommendations that have made the committee a flashpoint in national debates over public health policy.
ACIP recommended the CDC end the universal recommendation for COVID-19 vaccines, while still making them available to anyone who wants them.
The committee also stopped recommending thimerosal-containing vaccines for children; recommended that toddlers receive separate immunizations for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) and for chickenpox (varicella); and began debating whether the hepatitis B vaccine should be given to all infants at birth.
At its first meeting in June, the committee also voted to recommend that all newborns receive Merck’s new monoclonal antibody shot, designed to protect against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
Other national health advocacy organizations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, have broken with ACIP and issued their own recommendation that children should continue to get the COVID-19 shot.
Proposal includes automatic enrollment in state vaccine registry
New Jersey’s proposal expands participation in the New Jersey Immunization Information System (NJIIS), a centralized database tracking individual vaccination histories. The database automatically enrolls children born in the state after Jan. 1, 1998, but residents born before 1998 must enroll themselves. Residents can opt out of the system.
Under the proposed changes, all vaccine doses administered in the state — including COVID-19, flu and future vaccines — would be entered automatically, with limited opt-out provisions.
Birth records would be automatically linked to NJIIS for children, and adults’ vaccination data would be entered regardless of individual consent. Access to the registry would extend to schools, healthcare providers, insurers and other authorized users.
Privacy advocates say the new rules could erode patient consent and data security.
The new rules say the changes stem from successful vaccine surveillance practices developed during the COVID-19 pandemic, which allowed health officials to identify and map “under-immunized populations,” then target them for vaccination campaigns.
Proposal expands disease reporting to include non-medical professionals
New Jersey is also proposing to broaden mandatory disease reporting to require non-medical personnel — such as school administrators, childcare directors and college officials — to collect and transmit health data.
The updated code expands the list of reportable conditions and introduces penalties for non-compliance.
Critics say the changes place sensitive health-reporting responsibilities in the hands of non-health professionals without adequate training or safeguards. NJDOH maintains that broader reporting improves the state’s ability to monitor and respond to public health threats.
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New rules permanently shield some state health data from public
The proposal also includes a permanent exemption under the Open Public Records Act — similar to the Freedom of Information Act, but at the state level — for records related to vaccination, testing, quarantine and outbreak response.
Those records typically become public after an emergency ends. Under the new rules, the state could keep them confidential indefinitely.
Supporters of the change cite the need to protect privacy, while transparency advocates argue it could limit accountability and make it harder for journalists, researchers or legislators to review government decision-making during public health crises.
“Why would they need to be secretive with that information?” Sebastian asked. “They have something to hide if they are trying to make records that have typically been available to the public permanently exempt from records requests.”
The rule changes also grant the state health commissioner broad discretion to determine what health data is collected and how it is shared, and how enforcement works.
According to Stand for Health Freedom, the change would allow the commissioner to unilaterally make changes — such as setting new conditions for school attendance or data reporting — without legislative action.
The proposal does not specify mechanisms for independent review or legislative oversight.
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