Gov. Patrick Morrisey, the new Republican governor of West Virginia, used his first full day in office this week to issue a barrage of executive orders, including one eradicating diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives from state-run institutions and another granting students exemptions from school vaccination programs on religious grounds.
Speaking at the State Capitol in Charleston on Tuesday, Governor Morrissey – who succeed Jim Justice in the role after serving as West Virginia’s attorney general for more than a decade – said of his assault on DEI that he was actually working to shield citizens from racial and gender discrimination, declaring that it was “inappropriate” for preferential treatment to be handed down to certain groups over others, whatever the intention.
However, US Census data for 2024 indicates that West Virginia’s racial-demographic makeup is currently 93 percent white, making it one of America’s least racially diverse states in the first place, casting doubt on the need for striking out against diversity hiring policies.
Morrissey defended his order by citing the US Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling that race cannot be a factor in deciding college admissions, saying that his administration would be sending out letters to cabinet officials and agency bosses instructing them to conduct reviews to identify “potential DEI that may exist within state government” so that it can be rooted out.
“Before I start calling everyone out, I want to see the changes put in place,” he said, declining to specify what initiatives in which agencies he wanted removed.
His vaccine order, meanwhile, upends the state’s school vaccination policy, which has previously been applauded by medical experts as among the safest for children in the United States.
West Virginia’s youth are required by law to receive vaccines for chickenpox, hepatitis-b, measles, meningitis, mumps, diphtheria, polio, rubella, tetanus and whooping cough – but not Covid-19 – before commencing their education.
Morrissey’s intervention now grants an exemption if parents write to the state Bureau of Public Health to outline their objections and marks a break with his pro-vaccine predecessor Justice, now a senator, who last year vetoed a sweeping vaccination bill passed by the Republican supermajority in the legislature precisely because it enabled opt-outs.
Morrissey argued his new order was permitted under the Equal Protection for Religion Act, which the West Virginia legislature passed in 2023 and which stipulates that the state cannot “substantially burden” an individual’s constitutional right to freedom of religion without a “compelling interest”.
But his state, along with Mississippi, already has the worst health outcomes and lowest life expectancy rates in the union, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, and its pre-pandemic vaccine rate for children of 95 percent has recently fallen to 92.7 percent.
The governor stated that it was his role to ensure that the US Constitution is interpreted “correctly and enforced the right way” in West Virginia.
But the state’s Democratic Party Chairman Mike Pushkin said he was not impressed with Morrissey’s executive orders, calling them a “troubling example” of executive overreach that “could harm us for generations”.
Pushkin accused the governor of using “divisive rhetoric aimed at dividing people by race”, stating that, in his opinion, Morrisey was “trying to not just make laws, but also interpret them.”
“The newly-elected governor of West Virginia needs to remember that he’s the governor for all of us, even people who don’t necessarily have the same beliefs as him and also people who don’t look like him,” he added.
Like Morrissey, President-elect Donald Trump has promised to fire out a flurry of executive orders as soon as he returns to the White House following his inauguration ceremony on Monday and he too has complained about DEI and perceived “wokeness” in America’s public institutions.
Trump has also nominated Robert F Kennedy Jr, a noted vaccine sceptic, to be his administration’s secretary of health and human services.
Additional reporting by agencies.
