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Pfizer paid $500,000 to two nonprofits that later signed a letter urging Massachusetts lawmakers to eliminate the state’s religious exemption from mandatory childhood school vaccinations, according to the company’s own public grant disclosures and a legislative letter reviewed by The Defender.
The drugmaker’s “US Medical, Scientific, Patient and Civic Organization Funding Report” for fiscal year 2024, posted on Pfizer’s transparency website, lists a $400,000 payment to the American Society for Meningitis Prevention (ASMP) for “Policy Efforts for comprehensive Meningococcal Meningitis Vaccination.”
The same report lists a $100,000 payment to the March of Dimes Foundation in 2024, categorized as a “Vaccine Policy Campaign Maternal Immunization.”
More than a year later, both organizations’ names appear among roughly two dozen signatories on a June 1 letter to the Massachusetts House Committee on Ways and Means urging lawmakers to advance House Bill 2554 (H.2554).
The bill would “remove the non-medical exemption from required school vaccines and enhance data collection and sharing to better track immunization rates,” according to the letter.
Patti Wukovits and Alicia Stillman, ASMP’s co-executive directors, and Chloe Schwartz, March of Dimes’ director of its maternal and infant health initiative, signed on behalf of their organizations.
Massachusetts currently allows parents to opt their children out of school vaccination requirements on religious grounds. The bill would eliminate that option, leaving only medical exemptions.
ASMP separately describes itself as focused on educating young people and parents about meningococcal meningitis. The March of Dimes has publicly credited Pfizer as an “inaugural supporter” of its vaccine-education campaign, describing a partnership that supports work encouraging adherence to the vaccine schedule recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Neither organization has publicly addressed the timing of the donations relative to their support for H.2554.
Pfizer’s disclosure does not indicate the money was earmarked specifically for opposing Massachusetts’ religious exemption. The stated purposes are broader vaccine-policy campaigns tied to meningococcal disease and maternal immunization.
The ASMP and the March of Dimes did not respond to requests for comment from The Defender.
Critics call Massachusetts bill a ‘dangerous attack’
As of September 2026, bill-tracking records show that H.2554 was positively reviewed and referred onward, consistent with the coalition letter’s own reference to the bill having “recently reported favorably out of the House Committee on Health Care Financing.”
The bill’s supporters, including the Massachusetts Medical Society, argue that eliminating nonmedical exemptions would raise vaccination rates — as it has in California, Connecticut, Maine and New York, which eliminated religious exemptions — and reduce the risk of school-based disease outbreaks amid rising exemption rates.
Opponents, including Health Action Massachusetts, call the bill a “dangerous attack on religious freedom and educational access” that would force families who decline vaccination on religious grounds to homeschool their children, including children with special needs, regardless of circumstance.
Drugmakers should be required to define financial ties to lobbying groups
Pharmaceutical industry funding of advocacy groups is not a new practice.
But critics argue it allows companies with a direct financial stake in vaccination mandates to shape public health policy through intermediary organizations rather than lobbying directly.
Gail Seiler, president of Betrayal Project USA, said drugmakers should clearly define their financial ties to advocacy groups that go on to lobby for vaccines.
“When pharmaceutical companies provide substantial funding to organizations that then advocate for public policies affecting the use of those companies’ products, the public deserves complete transparency about those financial relationships,” Seiler told The Defender.
Parental consent for childhood vaccinations is also at issue, Seiler said.
“No parent should be forced to justify a deeply personal medical decision for their child to a corporation, lobbying organization, school system or government official,” she told The Defender. “Informed consent cannot exist without the freedom to say no.”
William M. Snyder, an attorney with Protat Snyder Law, called the financial arrangement “another example of Pfizer using its funds to enable non profits to lobby states to eliminate vaccine exemptions.
Bethany Clark of the Kentucky Medical Freedom Coalition told The Defender that monetary arrangements pharmaceutical companies have with larger organizations make it harder for local ones to have an impact.
“It does raise questions about how much influence corporations have over legislation,” Clark said.
“As a grassroots organization, it’s difficult to see our efforts to pass pro-medical freedom bills or stop bad legislation and wonder if our seeming inability to move the needle in the last few sessions has anything to do with the deep pockets of organizations with a lot of money at stake in the outcome of that legislation.”
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Pharma financing vaccine mandate lobbyists should set off ‘every ethics alarm’
Dr. Chris Flowers extended a critique of the funding structure itself. He told The Defender:
“It does not matter whether the product is a vaccine, a software license, or a building material. When the seller finances the advocacy that would force the public to buy it, the conflict is structural.
“Mandates plus manufacturer funding of the mandate campaign is a combination that should set off every ethics alarm. Paying the messengers who then demand a mandate for your product is not philanthropy. It is sales.”
“Religious exemptions exist so the state cannot conscript every family into a commercial market,” Flowers added.
Pfizer and its defenders counter that funding patient- and disease-advocacy groups is standard industry practice disclosed for exactly this kind of scrutiny, and that the grants funded general vaccine-policy work.
Pfizer did not respond to a request for comment from The Defender.
Related articles in The Defender
- Pfizer Board Member Dismissed COVID Vaccine Studies During 2020 CIA Briefing
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- Connecticut Amended Law to Avoid Religious Exemption Suit, Parents Allege
- Congress Asks Pfizer, Merck for Details About Clinical Trials in China
- HHS Says No Decision on COVID Vaccine Deal With Pfizer, But Questions Persist About $1.24 Billion Contracts
