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President Donald Trump this month issued an executive order prohibiting discretionary federal funds from going to schools and colleges or universities that require students to get a COVID-19 vaccine. But there currently are no states that require the vaccines for students, and only a few colleges or universities continue to have such a mandate.
“The order is expected to have little national impact because COVID-19 vaccine mandates have mostly been dropped at schools and colleges across the United States, and many states have passed legislation forbidding such mandates,” the Associated Press reported in a story about the order that Trump signed.
Yet during the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump often promised that if elected he would “not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate.” His Feb. 14 order — titled “Keeping Education Accessible and Ending COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates in Schools” — targets COVID-19 vaccines exclusively.
“Some school districts and universities continue to coerce children and young adults into taking the COVID-19 vaccine by conditioning their education on it, and others may re-implement such mandates,” the order said. “Parents and young adults should be empowered with accurate data regarding the remote risks of serious illness associated with COVID-19 for children and young adults, as well as how those risks can be mitigated through various measures, and left free to make their own decisions accordingly.”
The order went on to say that “discretionary Federal funds should not be used to directly or indirectly support or subsidize an educational service agency, State educational agency, local educational agency, elementary school, secondary school, or institution of higher education that requires students to have received a COVID-19 vaccination to attend any in-person education program.” And it directs the secretary of the Department of Education to work with the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to come up with a plan to end any mandates and deliver to the president a list of federal grants and contracts going to noncompliant institutions.
Since a White House fact sheet about Trump’s order also said “[s]ome schools and universities have recently enforced or continue to enforce COVID-19 vaccine mandates,” we asked the White House to identify those schools and universities. We received no response.
Broadly, no states have a requirement for students in kindergarten through 12th grade to get a COVID-19 vaccine, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy. NASHP has published a U.S. map that tracks state policies, and it was last updated in January 2024. It also shows that at least 21 states have banned schools from requiring COVID-19 shots for students.
The nonpartisan research organization is working on an update to its tracker, but a spokesperson confirmed to us in an email that no U.S. states currently have COVID-19 vaccine mandates for K-12 schools.
NASHP said that many states began “winding down” prior mandates after the federal COVID-19 public health emergency expired in May 2023, about three years after a pandemic was declared by the World Health Organization in March 2020.
In addition, in an interview with CBS News, which called Trump’s order “largely symbolic,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician and senior scholar at the John Hopkins Center for Health Security, emphasized that at the local level “zero” public school districts across the U.S. “have a [COVID-19] vaccine requirement for entry.”
In contrast, all 50 states and Washington, D.C., require students to be vaccinated against some other diseases or infections, such as measles, polio and chickenpox. All states allow exemptions for medical reasons, and some allow them for religious or personal reasons.
As for institutions of higher education, No College Mandates, an advocacy group against mandatory vaccines for students, recently identified just 15 U.S. colleges or universities that it said accept federal funding and still require at least some students to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
But even that list is out of date because it includes Morehouse College, Spelman College and Clark Atlanta University. Those three private institutions are part of the Atlanta University Center Consortium and its policy for the 2024-2025 school year says that the COVID-19 vaccine is “strongly recommend[ed]” but “not mandated for faculty, staff, and students.” An AUC Consortium spokesperson told us that policy went into effect in August.
Meanwhile, at a minimum, 34 states and D.C. “require some type of [other] vaccination for students who are attending college or university classes,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
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