## Facts

- Arkansas required schoolchildren to receive specified immunizations as a condition of attending public or private school.
- The statute provided a religious exemption only when immunization conflicted with the tenets and practices of a “recognized church or religious denomination” of which the applicant was a member.
- The Arkansas Department of Health implemented policies under which officials screened exemption requests to determine whether an applicant’s beliefs reflected a “recognized” religious organization.
- Cynthia Boone sought a religious exemption for her minor daughter, Ashley Boone, from the Hepatitis B vaccine based on Boone’s sincerely held religious objections.
- Boone’s exemption request was denied because her objections were not tied to the doctrine of a “recognized church or religious denomination.”
- Ashley Boone was suspended from school for noncompliance with the immunization requirement.
- Boone sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the state health director (official capacity) and the school district, challenging (1) the religious-exemption scheme under the First Amendment and (2) the immunization mandate under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
- The parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment.

## Issues

1. Whether Arkansas’s religious exemption, limited to adherents of a “recognized church or religious denomination” and administered through governmental screening of “recognized” religions, violated the First Amendment.
2. Whether Arkansas’s compulsory school immunization requirement violated the Free Exercise Clause and/or substantive due process rights of a parent to direct a child’s medical care.

## Decision

- The court granted in part and denied in part defendants’ motion for summary judgment and granted in part and denied in part Boone’s First Amendment summary-judgment motion; it denied Boone’s Fourteenth Amendment summary-judgment motion.
- The court held unconstitutional the statutory religious exemption insofar as it conditioned eligibility on membership in a “recognized church or religious denomination.”
- The court upheld the constitutionality of the compulsory immunization requirement and rejected Boone’s broader challenges to mandatory vaccination under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

## Legal Principles

- Government may not confer religious benefits or exemptions in a manner that favors certain religious denominations or institutional forms of religion over other sincerely held religious beliefs.
- A statutory exemption that requires the state to determine whether an applicant belongs to a “recognized” religion, or that conditions relief on adherence to an approved denomination, violates First Amendment requirements of governmental neutrality among religions.
- Generally applicable, neutrally enforced compulsory vaccination requirements for school attendance are a permissible exercise of state authority to protect public health and do not, without more, violate free-exercise rights or parental substantive due process rights.

## Conclusion

The court invalidated Arkansas’s discriminatory “recognized church” limitation in its school-immunization religious exemption but left the underlying compulsory vaccination requirement in place, holding that the state could require immunization for school attendance while remaining neutral among religious beliefs.


Boone v. Boozman, 217 F. Supp. 2d 938 (E.D. Ark. 2002)