Maine legislative hearing on vax mandates and restoring exemptions
Below are the bills and instructions for providing testimony by zoom or in person
Religious and philosophic exemptions were voted away by the Maine legislature in a contentious vote 4 years ago. After dealmaking and rewording, it passed by a single vote.
Now, in light of the COVID vaccine debacle, we are revisiting those exemptions and vaccine mandates. The Education Committee of the Legislature is holding a hearing on a series of bills designed to restore the exemptions or prohibit certain vaccine mandates.
Testimonies may be up to 3 minutes. If you are testifying in person, you will hand 20 copies of any materials you wish to share with the clerk. You cannot use other visual aids during your testimony. The instructions for ZOOM testifying are below. You will need to tell the committee whether you are testifying for or against one or more bills below. (Scroll down.) I imagine most of us are in favor of all of them, and your testimony can address one or more. To read the bill language, you must go to the link below and click on each bill individually. You may also need to click to the week of April 2-9.
The committee will eventually hold a work session to harmonize the bills and determine whether they get out of committee to a full vote.
https://legislature.maine.gov/committee/#Committees/EDU
Info from Health Choice Maine:
Time: April 3 at 10am. We don’t know how long the meeting will last, but plan on at least 2-3 hours.
Place: The Cross Building, Room 208. GPS address: 111 Sewall St, Augusta, ME 04330
Parking: Free public parking is located in front of the Cross Office Building (111 Sewall St, Augusta, ME) and in the multilevel parking garage on the corner of Capitol and Sewall Streets (93 Sewall St, Augusta, ME). More info here.
Bring: 20 copies of your testimony ONLY if you are giving an oral testimony (no copies needed if you are only submitting written testimony). Snacks — there is a cafeteria at the State House, but feel free to bring snacks or lunch in case the meeting runs long. Reminder: you will need to go through security to enter the building.
Seating: There is seating for about 50 or so in the Committee room. Those that don’t get a seat will need to wait in the area outside the room.
Wear: The color blue to show you are a part of Health Choice Maine (optional – obviously if you are testifying in person, wear what gives you the most confidence!)
Look for: The Health Choice Maine group will be on the steps of the State House until around 9:30am, then we will start moving into the Cross Building. HCM leaders can help guide you on where to go and where to sign up if you are submitting oral testimony.
If you have not done so yet, please get your testimony prepared, and send us a copy to
If you have any questions about testimony, please refer to our legislative guide below.
For more information about LD 51, please visit our website:
To submit written testimony & to sign up to testify via Zoom
To sign up to submit the written version of testimony, and/or to sign up to testify via zoom,
visit https://www.mainelegislature.org/testimony/ and follow these steps:
- Click "Public Hearing"
- Select "Education and Cultural Affairs" in the committee dropdown
- Choose "April 3, 2023"
- Click "LD 51: An Act to Restore Religious & Philosophical Exemptions to Immunization Requirements"
- If you are testifying via zoom Click "I would like to testify over Zoom" otherwise just dont click that box
- Select "I am for the proposed legislation
- Type your testimony in the box below, or upload a file
- Complete the form with your name, town, and email address
I pray this works to reinstate religious exemptions in Maine. NY is another state where this needs to happen. If Maine reinstates, that is good news not just for Maine, but it sets precidence for other states that need to reinstate this, too.
No matter what decisions are made, I have no intention of abiding by any decision that attempts to force me to take a substance against my will “for the greater good”. If I have to go door to door up and down my road to find out who is for or against such a thing, then I will do so. Our national power doesn’t start with a well-orchestrated scare campaign by a profiteering few and their willing drones, it starts with the assumption that folks can think for themselves in these matters. Put into a different light, I would not assume that my neighbor would take the same medication as I do for myself nor would I force him or her to do so. I would also not force him or her to do so for my sake in a life or death situation. I would not force my religion upon him or her, if heaven or hell was at stake (and I believe that it is, by the way) because that gave us the Inquisition. This applies to the subject at hand, by the way, because minus unblemished empirical evidence it indeed qualifies as a religion!