Tennessee’s top vaccination official says she was fired Monday after distributing a memo about teen COVID-19 vaccinations that angered some state lawmakers. 

Dr. Michelle Fiscus, who had been the medical director for vaccine-preventable diseases and immunization programs at the Tennessee Department of Health, now alleges that there are anti-vaccination efforts in the state that extend beyond COVID-19.

Fiscus told CNN on Tuesday morning that she was not given a reason for her termination. She, however, claims state legislators began to target her after she sent out a May memo to vaccine providers informing them about the law regarding teens seeking immunization without a parent present. She says she believes she was fired to appease angry lawmakers.

“Our leadership has been toxic to work under and, and morale within the department is poor,” she said. “There are state workers all over the state who fear for their jobs because they want to do the right thing and the administration is much more interested in politics.”

Health Department spokesperson Sarah Tanksley said the agency would not comment on the termination.

With 38% of its residents fully vaccinated, Tennessee has the country’s eighth-lowest inoculation rate. Meanwhile, new COVID-19 infections have increased 152% in the state since June 21.

Fiscus said she began to work on the controversial memo after receiving several questions from vaccine providers about what they should do if minors came to them seeking the vaccine. Fiscus asked her department’s Office of General Counsel to provide language explaining the “Mature Minor Doctrine,” which allows children 14-17 years old to seek medical care without parental consent and has been state law since a 1987 Supreme Court.

Information about the doctrine has been on the Health Department website since at least 2008.

According to Fiscus, she received the requested document in an email that also said it was “blessed by the Governor’s office” and to “feel free to distribute to anyone.”

Fiscus says she copy-and-pasted the information into the memo and then distributed it.

Health Department officials were subsequently called twice to testify before a legislative committee to answer for the memo, which some lawmakers believed sought to undermine parental authority, as well as a Facebook ad advertising that children 12 and older were eligible to be vaccinated.

“There is a significant contingent of people here and many of our lawmakers, unfortunately, who choose to buy into anti-vaccine rhetoric and conspiracy theory instead of listening to actual science and listening to CDC recommendations,” Fiscus told CNN.

Two weeks after the hearing, the Health Department instructed county-level employees to stop vaccination events aimed at teens and to halt any online outreach to them, The Tennessean reported, citing emails it obtained.

Fiscus told CNN the pushback to vaccinations for minors in Tennessee is no longer just related to the coronavirus.

“What really concerns me is that in order to appease the legislators that were upset about this memo, our leadership of the Department of Health has instructed the Department of Health to no longer do outreach around immunizations for children of any kind,” she said. “That's infant immunizations, HPV immunizations in a state that has one of the highest HPV cancer rates in the country, flu vaccine, outreach in schools is being canceled for the fall. Back-to-school immunizations can't be messaged. National immunization Awareness Month is in August, and we were told that we're not allowed to message that. 

“That is the travesty,” Fiscus added. “That is where the people of Tennessee have been sold out for politics.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.