TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — As Florida attorney general, James Uthmeier has worked to bring church and state together.

He’s said he won’t enforce a constitutional ban on government funding for churches and other religious groups, and has made clear his view that the Constitution shouldn’t be looked at with a “secularist gloss.”

But Florida’s Catholic bishops, in response to Uthmeier demanding an explanation of why Catholic schools require vaccines, are emphasizing the church’s separation from the state — while also insisting that Florida would be wrong to take away the schools’ state-funded scholarship money.

The messy crossover between Florida’s government and the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops began in late July, when Uthmeier sent a letter to the conference urging Catholic schools to let students opt out of the state’s mandated vaccines for religious reasons.

State law allows parents to opt their children out of required school vaccines with a religious exemption. But Catholic schools in Florida don’t accept those, saying that the church doesn’t teach that vaccines — even those developed using aborted fetal cells — are intrinsically evil.

In the letter his office sent in July, Uthmeier, a Catholic himself, said he was “confident that the teachings of the Catholic Church” wouldn’t compel families to vaccinate their children, and that the schools had “no legitimate religious reason” to refuse vaccine exemptions. He threatened the schools with the loss of state vouchers if they didn’t comply.

In a tersely worded response sent to Uthmeier’s office earlier this month, the conference’s executive director, Michael Sheedy, said the state’s bishops “do not have to justify to your office their position on Catholic teaching.”

“Respectfully, any insinuation that a government official can dictate to the Catholic Church (or any religion) how to apply her tenets and dogma, violates well-established constitutional religious freedom rights,” Sheedy wrote.

Sheedy’s letter accused the state of violating the First Amendment and the church’s autonomy, pointing to the state’s demand that the group explain the “religious grounds” it uses to reject vaccine exemptions.

“The government may not decide that Church teaching is insufficiently religious …” Sheedy wrote. “Nor may it require Church leaders to defend their interpretation of Catholic doctrine before civil authorities as a condition of operating religious schools.”

Catholicism is a hierarchical religion, the letter states. And while Catholics may debate how best to apply church teachings, it is a diocese’s bishop — not the state — who sets policy.

After explaining that the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops has no obligation to explain its position, Sheedy still lays out the reasoning. He said the bishops want to “protect the common good,” including for expectant mothers, elderly parents and children who cannot be vaccinated because of a medical condition.

“It is safe to say that Catholic schools might be one of the few safe havens for such children,” Sheedy wrote.

Parents are free not to vaccinate their child, he wrote, and they are free to choose a different educational path, like homeschooling.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in 2020, Florida parents have increasingly used religious exemptions to avoid having their children vaccinated. In 2019, about 94% of Florida kindergarten students were vaccinated. In 2026, about 89% of students are, a level that can threaten herd immunity. (Herd immunity is when a high enough proportion of a population is immune to a disease that the disease no longer spreads easily. For measles, it’s around 92% to 94%.)

Sheedy, at the end of his letter, said the state cannot disqualify Catholic schools from the state voucher program because of a difference in theological opinion.

Florida’s Catholic schools have boomed since Florida implemented a universal school voucher program. Over 95% of students at Catholic schools are on some kind of state scholarship, said Jim Rigg, superintendent of Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Miami.

The conference’s letter, sent Aug. 7, doesn’t seem to have swayed Uthmeier. In a social media post earlier this week, Uthmeier again suggested that the schools should have their vouchers removed.

In his post, he said if the Catholic Church insists that vaccines are mandated, that’s a “completely new teaching.” He acknowledged it’s not for the state to dispute a religious organization’s mission.

“However, a separate question is whether a private school that doesn’t follow state laws protecting parental rights and deeply held beliefs should still be permitted to participate in state programs and receive state funding,” Uthmeier said.

Michele Taylor, a spokesperson for the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops, said there has been no disruption for Catholic school students using state vouchers this year.

She said the conference hasn’t received any response since sending its letter in early August, even though Sheedy offered in the letter to meet with Uthmeier.

The only feedback the conference got — indirectly — was Uthmeier’s social media post, which he again resurfaced Wednesday.

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