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techdirt.com · Feb 18, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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SC State Senator Proposes Bill To Remove Religious Exemptions For Vaccines In Public School Children from the thank-god dept The current measles shitstorm in South Carolina has been burning for several months now, dating all the way back to October of 2025. What started with a bunch of counties that were undervaccinated for measles began spiraling out of control at the start of 2026. The federal tracker for measles cases is at best woefully out of date, or purposefully obfuscating the true degree of the problem at worst. That public tracker, which is updated every Friday, claims a current nationwide count of confirmed measles cases at 910. The current measles count in South Carolina alone, for this year, is 933. Once again we have a federal government program run by RFK Jr. that is behind, unprepared, and impotent. In the absence of federal leadership, the states will attempt to take action on their own. And sometimes those actions will result in federal pushback from the very same people who are causing the problem through inaction in the first place. I have no doubt that will be the case with a South Carolina state senator’s attempt at a bill to remove the religious exemptions for vaccinations for public schools in the state. The context here is that South Carolina has one of the most wide open programs for obtaining a religious exemption for a childhood vaccine in the country. I think only Florida might be considered more wide open, given that state has mostly removed all vaccination requirements for public schooling. In South Carolina, you essentially just have to whisper the word “religion” and you’re exempt. But that wont’ be the case if Senator Margie Mathews gets her way. Senator Margie Bright Matthews (D-Dist. 45) has introduced a bill that would eliminate religious exemptions for measles vaccinations for students in public K–12 schools and childcare settings. It’s a move that’s drawing both support and criticism across the state. Matthews said the rising measles cases prompted her to step in with the proposed legislation in an effort to bolster public health and keep communities safe. “The goal of the bill is simply to protect children and stop the spread of measles in South Carolina,” Matthews said. Yes, of course it is. And the pushback that has already begun within the state is absurd. I know enough about religion, as well as religious demographics, to know with absolute certainty that the number of “religious exemptions” in South Carolina doesn’t remotely comport with the number of religious adherents to any religion that has anything to say about vaccinations. South Carolina is largely Protestant and Catholic, for instance. While Protestants have traditionally been in the vaccine hesitant camp, I have never heard a serious biblical argument made for that stance. Were one to even exist, I’m confident most of the people applying for exemptions couldn’t make it. Instead, these people are vaccine hesitant for entirely non-religious reasons. And that, I will say, is their right. But this legislation suggests that nobody’s right to their religion includes the right to put the rest of their community in danger. Senator Matthews stressed that the goal of the bill is to increase vaccination rates and limit the spread of measles. “I plan on reminding them every time we have new cases in South Carolina, I plan on writing and requesting that my bill receive a hearing before the committee, so that we can have the influencers from South Carolina that are against this bill and that are for this bill, I would like to have public hearing in reference to it,” she said. Despite my strict adherence to being non-religious, I am, in fact, sensitive to ensuring that we maintain the secular rights of those who don’t agree with me. It’s that secularism that has allowed the flourishing of both free speech and thought in this country as well as, perhaps ironically, of religion itself. All of that is just aces as far as I’m concerned. But just like someone’s freedom of movement ends the moment their fist makes contact with my face, so too does the rights of religious freedom end at the point where it puts everyone else’s children in danger. Filed Under: anti-vax, margie bright matthews, measles, religious freedom, south carolina, vaccine mandates Appeals Court Tosses Stupid Lawsuit Filed By Anti-Vaxxer Claiming Federal Government Made Twitter Ban Her Account from the maybe-just-stop-violating-the-ToS dept Colleen Huber M.D. thinks she can cure cancer by altering patients’ sugar intake. She also believes baking soda is better than chemotherapy when it comes to fighting this disease. Rational people think she’s endangering people’s lives and have said as much. Repeatedly. In response, Colleen Huber has filed lawsuits. Repeatedly. She feels she speaks from a position of expertise. But her expertise has only been lauded by others operating in the same shady medical field. In 2018, she sued Steven Novella, a longtime skeptic who has repeatedly punched holes in bizarre claims made by people practicing alternative medicine. Following the arrival of COVID-19 on American shores, Dr. Huber began engaging in anti-vax agitation via her Twitter account. Unsurprisingly, Twitter banned her account for violating its rules on spreading medical misinformation. So, Huber sued Twitter. And she sued the Biden Administration for (allegedly) guiding Twitter’s moderation efforts to target her account for permanent suspension. Huber claimed the administration’s statements and meetings with social media company heads amounted to direct government interference with her right to post dumb bullshit online. The district court tossed this lawsuit in March of this year. Huber’s claims — which included the bizarre allegation that Section 230 was unconstitutional — all failed. The court said Huber offered no plausible allegations the government conspired with Twitter to ban her account. It also noted that Huber’s state action allegations raised First Amendment concerns… just not the ones she thought she was raising. Holding that mere acquiescence by private entities to the government’s encouragement of broad policy is sufficient to establish state action would thereby effectively conscript private actors into service as governmental agents subject to the constraints and obligations of the Constitution. It would substantially obfuscate the line between public and private action under the Constitution…. A broad reading of state action in this context would raise potential First Amendment concerns…Constraining Twitter to First Amendment standards in the exercise of its editorial rights thus itself raises countervailing First Amendment concerns. Accordingly, finding a private entity is a state actor through a claim of conspiracy must require more than a broad brush claim of shared interests. Huber’s complaint was dismissed with prejudice. As the district court saw it, no amount of amending would result in an actionable claim against Twitter or the Biden Administration. Huber, of course, appealed. And, as Eric Goldman reports, she has lost again. In the wake of its dismissal of another jawboning case last month, the Ninth Circuit breezily rejects Huber’s appeal in a very brief memorandum opinion showing how poorly the plaintiff’s arguments resonated with the judges: “the complaint does not contain any nonconclusory allegations plausibly showing an agreement between Twitter and the government to violate her constitutional rights. Contrary to Huber’s argument, the two media reports on which she draws do not plausibly show that Twitter agreed to suspend her account on the government’s behalf.” “Huber’s allegations do not “tend to exclude the possibility” of the alternative explanation that Twitter, in suspending her account, was independently enforcing Huber’s violation of Twitter’s Terms of Service. Indeed, the complaint contains no allegations that Huber did not violate Twitter’s Terms of Service or that Twitter would not have suspended Huber’s account absent the alleged conspiracy.” The Unruh Act claim fails because Huber is an Arizona resident. The Ninth Circuit has had some pretty weird ideas about Section 230 in recent months, but nothing in Huber’s lawsuit impresses the court enough to encourage her to pursue this severely flawed action against Twitter and the federal government. It only takes the Ninth Circuit four pages to affirm [PDF] the lower court’s dismissal, leaving Huber with one option: approaching the Supreme Court and hoping Clarence Thomas is able to convince the rest of the justices Section 230 shouldn’t apply to the moderation of content he prefers to consume. Unfortunately, a string of losses in court rarely deters performative lawsuits or opportunistic lawyers. The stupidity will undoubtedly continue for years to come, if only to allow fantasists like Huber to (self) fulfill their “censorship” conspiracy theories. Filed Under: 1st amendment, 9th circuit, anti-vax, colleen huber, content moderation, section 230, state action Companies: twitter Lessons Learned From Creating Good Faith Debate In A Sea Of Garbage Disinformation from the it's-possible dept A few weeks ago, Elizabeth Dwoskin, Will Oremus and Gerrit De Vynck from the Washington Post published one of the most fascinating — and in some ways, most important — discussions of social media and dealing with “disinformation” that I’ve seen in a while. It touches on two things I’ve written about recently — how the way we talk about disinformation is not helpful and the difficulty in determining how to deal with bad faith actors. The WaPo article talks about a group on Facebook — set up by concerned mothers — that focuses on having thoughtful debate about vaccines — an area that is fraught with misinformation, disinformation, utter nonsense, and propaganda. But where there may be legitimate causes for debate and concern. But the problem is that the space is so flooded with nonsense that it