Joseph Ladapo, Florida surgeon general, defends plan to end vaccine mandates

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo on Sunday defended his plan to eliminate all state vaccination requirements, casting it as an “issue of right and wrong,” despite pushback from public health experts and President Trump.

Dr. Ladapo argued that some other countries, including the U.K. and Sweden, have no vaccine mandates and “the sky is not falling,” but stressed that parents in Florida who want to have their children vaccinated will be able to do so.

“There’s some confusion about what we said. We’re not taking vaccines away from anyone,” Dr. Ladapo said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “What we said was that, if you want them, God bless you, you can have as many as you want. And if you don’t want them, parents should have the ability and the power to decide what goes into their children’s bodies. It’s that simple.”

At the same time, he said school vaccine mandates represent “coercion” and violate medical ethics as well as the rights of parents.

“Ultimately, this is an issue very clearly of parents’ rights,” Dr. Ladapo said. “Do I need to analyze whether it’s appropriate for parents’ to be able to decide what goes into their children’s bodies?”

Mr. Trump said some vaccines are “amazing” after Dr. Lapado said Wednesday that the Florida Department of Health would move to end its school immunization requirements, which include polio, chicken pox, measles-mumps-rubella, and diphtheria-tetanus-acellular-pertussis [DTaP].

“You have some vaccines that are so amazing: the polio vaccine I happen to think is amazing. A lot of people think that Covid is amazing,” the president said Friday at an Oval Office gathering.

He called Dr. Lapado’s position a “tough stance,” adding that “you have to be very careful when you say that some people don’t have to be vaccinated.”

“You have vaccines that work, they just pure and simple work. They’re not controversial at all,” Mr. Trump said. “I think those vaccines should be used, otherwise some people are going to catch it and they endanger other people. When you don’t have controversy at all, I think people should take it.”

Asked whether Mr. Trump was wrong, Dr. Ladapo was careful not to criticize the president, adding that he had spoken with him.

“I think it’s much more important that parents have the right and the ability to decide what enters their children’s bodies,” Dr. Ladapo said. “In terms of President Trump again, he obviously is entitled to any perspective that he wants, but in terms of my perspective, that’s absolutely how I feel about it.”

Tapper: Before you made your decision to lift vaccine mandates, did you do any data analysis?

Florida Surgeon General Ladapo: “Absolutely not. There’s a conflation of the science and what is the right and wrong thing to do…I don’t need to do an analysis on that.”

Tapper: “So… pic.twitter.com/InGST19LS0

— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) September 7, 2025

Florida would be the first state to ban all vaccine mandates. The state already has a religious exemption for parents who want to opt out of school immunization requirements.

Under questioning from host Jake Tapper, Dr. Ladapo said the department has not conducted analyses on how lifting mandates would impact the spread of disease and hospitalization rates, but said that the state’s medical infrastructure was up to the task.

“In terms of outbreaks, we do have outbreaks In Florida, just like every state, and we manage those, so there are no special procedures that need to be made,” he said.