This KY lawmaker wants to ban businesses from requiring COVID-19 vaccines for workers
As spread of COVID-19 accelerates in Kentucky, a Republican lawmaker has introduced a bill that would bar businesses from mandating coronavirus vaccinations for employees or even asking about an employee’s vaccination status.
The bill, pre-filed Wednesday by Rep. Lynn Bechler, R-Marion, would make it “unlawful’ for an employer to “limit, segregate or classify employees in any way,” or deprive them a job, just because a person “declines immunization or refuses to disclose his or her immunization status,” according to the bill language.
It would also prohibit a business from requiring, “as a condition of employment, that any employee or applicant for employment submit to immunization or disclose his or her immunization status.”
In short, under the bill, “an employer shall not require the immunization of any employee or applicant for employment as a condition of employment, [and] an employer shall not request any employee or applicant . . . to disclose his or her immunization status.”
On Monday, Bechler pre-filed another bill for the 2022 General Assembly barring public schools and universities from requiring masks in classrooms, on buses, or at school-sponsored events. The bill language also protects child care centers from penalties should they refuse to enforce a mask mandate.
As coronavirus surges in Kentucky — the positivity rate hit 12.47% on Tuesday, an all-time high — the governor last week signed an executive order requiring masks to be worn in all child care, pre-Kindergarten and K-12 settings as children across the state returned to in-person learning. The Kentucky Board of Education last week also unanimously passed an emergency regulation requiring the same. All of the state’s public colleges and universities are also requiring universal masking indoors and encouraging vaccination.
Though studies show masking is a very effective tool at limiting spread of COVID-19, the legislature’sAdministrative Regulation Review Subcommittee on Tuesday, in a largely symbolic vote, found Beshear’s school mask mandate order to be “deficient regulations.”
While Beshear has not instituted a vaccine mandate for health care workers employed at state-run facilities, such as veterans nursing homes, he has called on private sector businesses to require employees to get vaccinated. So far, Kentucky’s hospital systems have largely heeded that call. Two weeks ago, a dozen health care systems across the commonwealth announced they were requiring their staff to get immunized against the virus, including UK HealthCare, Appalachian Regional Healthcare, Baptist Health, King’s Daughters Medical System and Pikeville Medical Center.
By the week’s end, COVID-19 hospitalizations are projected to reach record heights. Roughly 54% of the state is at least partially vaccinated.
This story may be updated.
This story was originally published August 18, 2021 at 12:38 PM.
