Connecticut Democrats moved quickly to advance Gov. Ned Lamont’s HB 5044 vaccine recommendations bill, winning final passage in the state Senate on Thursday with a 22-12 vote. The vote came with more than a week remaining in the legislative session, according to the AP reporting distributed through the Connecticut Mirror.
Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff said the chamber took up the bill so soon because of what he described as critical public-health changes at the federal level, along with measles outbreaks in states that have loosened their immunization standards. In a statement, Duff said “Attacks on vaccine science, cuts to public health infrastructure and measles outbreaks in states that have loosened their immunization standards demonstrate the need for urgency in Connecticut,” and added, “Connecticut has an obligation to act quickly and decisively. That is why we moved on this bill today.”
The proposal is backed by Lamont and would expand the power of Connecticut’s Public Health Commissioner to establish vaccine recommendations for both adults and children. It would also guarantee insurance coverage of recommended shots and allow the agency to purchase doses from sources other than the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The bill passed the House on an 89-60 vote on Monday, only two days before it reached the Senate for final action. During a March public hearing, hundreds of members of the public came out against the measure, with more than 500 people signing up to speak and the vast majority opposing it. Testifiers, the reporting said, criticized the bill as government overreach and an erosion of religious freedom.
In the Senate debate, Republicans raised concerns about the legislation’s effect on physicians and patients. Democrats argued that the commissioner’s vaccine recommendations, described in the bill debate as the “standard of care,” would not operate as a mandate, but Republicans said it could still have “very real implications” for doctors and patients.
Republican lawmakers offered amendments meant to address those concerns, including language they said would protect doctors from legal action if patients chose not to follow the “standard of care.” They also sought to prohibit discrimination by employers and insurers against residents who choose not to follow those recommendations. Those amendments failed.
One such amendment discussion included Sen. Saud Anwar, a Democrat from South Windsor and co-chair of the Public Health Committee, who said he empathized with fears surrounding insurers but did not want to risk sending the bill back to the House for further changes. Anwar suggested lawmakers could address those issues in the future.
The bill’s push forward also tracked the broader national fight over federal vaccine policy, as Lamont has said the legislation is intended to “speak clearly on the importance of vaccines” amid “mixed messages” from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The AP reporting said Kennedy ousted and replaced all 17 members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, known as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices or ACIP, and reduced the number of immunizations broadly recommended for children from 17 to 11.
The Connecticut Senate vote came after a federal judge issued an order in March temporarily blocking every major vaccine policy change made in the previous year, ruling that Kennedy and ACIP had ignored the traditional scientific process for establishing recommendations. The AP reporting said that, as of January, 27 states and the District of Columbia now deviate from federal guidelines for some or all childhood vaccines, according to KFF Health News.
The AP reporting also described a broader shift in public trust in vaccinations along partisan lines since the pandemic. It said that as of 2025, upwards of 85% of Democrats agreed with public school vaccine requirements, but only roughly half of Republicans reported the same—down from 79% in October 2019, according to Pew Research Center.