Analysis
Tracking Trump's executive orders: Vaccine mandates in public schools
Executive Order 14214: Keeping Education Accessible and Ending COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates in Schools
Signed: February 15, 2025
Key Provisions:
- Executive Order 14214 would halt “discretionary federal funds that 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”
- As it explains, “Given the incredibly low risk of serious COVID-19 illness for children and young adults, threatening to shut them out of an education is an intolerable infringement on personal freedom. Such mandates usurp parental authority and burden students of many faiths.”
- The Secretary of Education will issue guidelines to educational institutions about their obligations with “respect to parental authority, religious freedom, disability accommodations, and equal protection under law, as relevant to coercive COVID-19 school mandates”
- Within 90 days, it will create a plan to end COVID-19 school vaccine mandates and punish schools by withholding federal funding if they do not comply
Interfaith Alliance Counterpoints:
- Interfaith Alliance is deeply concerned with how Executive Order 14214 would affect educational freedom for our country’s students
- Instead of ensuring that schools are inclusive places for everyone, Executive Order 14214 would make schools less accessible for immuno-compromised students in the name of parental authority and religious freedom
- Interfaith Alliance believes that freedom of religion must not come at the expense of our other constitutional rights, particularly one’s right to decide how schools can best keep their students safe
- We cannot allow this administration to weaponize religious freedom to undermine public health.
Transcript
The Trump Administration’s Latest Attacks on Muslim Community Leaders
After months in detention, we finally received the good news that Ohio chaplain Ayman Soliman was released from jail as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) dropped his deportation case. Soliman was an interfaith chaplain at a children’s hospital and a longtime leader of the Ohio Muslim community with deep ties to interfaith work across the state. As ProPublica reported, Soliman’s asylum status was restored and his application for a green card was revived. This news came through the dedicated hard work and advocacy of many organizations, particularly CAIR-Ohio and his colleagues at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, who were fired for speaking out on his behalf.
Mahmoud Khalil’s deportation case has alarming implications
Earlier this year, during the holy month of Ramadan, ICE agents followed Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil home after he broke his fast and forcibly detained him without a warrant. Khalil, a Palestinian activist, was then disappeared into an unmarked vehicle and taken to an unknown location as his pregnant wife watched and pleaded for information. It was later revealed that Khalil had been moved to a detention center in Jena, Louisiana, where he faced deportation. He was held for over three months in poor conditions, missing his graduation and the birth of his first child.
True Religious Freedom Means Protecting Our Faith Leaders, Not Detaining Them
In early July, Ayman Soliman, a former Cincinnati Children’s Hospital chaplain, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after his asylum status was terminated in June. In response, local faith leaders organized a prayer vigil, rally, and peaceful march; during the march at least 15 protesters were detained by local police and charged with felony rioting.