ST. GEORGE — Rep. Walt Brooks said he is not anti-vaccination. He is anti-discrimination.
Brooks, a Republican, said this is the thrust behind his bill before the Utah Legislature – Vaccine Passport Amendments – which would ban businesses and most government entities from requiring employees to divulge immunization status or restrict patrons on whether they are vaccinated.
Proof of one’s immunization status also has been called “vaccine passports.”
While the COVID-19 vaccines have been at the forefront of public awareness, the bill, designated HB 60 in the 2022 legislative session, bans requiring the immunization status of all vaccines, including those for measles and mumps.
Brooks, whose 74th House District includes St. George and central Washington County, told St. George News the issue is not about vaccines but about people being discriminated from working because of their health status.
“I truly believe that’s personal health info. I think this is a civil right. Have you heard of an employer asking if they have AIDS? These type of things aren’t appropriate,” Brooks said. “It’s clear in Southern Utah, where I represent, that vaccine passports are not acceptable.”
The bill still allows for schools and medical facilities to require proof of vaccination.
The bill has drawn opposition from health officials, who say it hinders the chances of herd immunity from diseases, and some business leaders who say the bill itself is a mandate by the government on how businesses can screen their employees.
The bill also has been championed by groups opposed to vaccinations in general. However, Brooks said the bill is anti-discrimination, not anti-vaccination.
“This doesn’t mean I’m anti-vax. I’m vaccinated but that’s my choice. It’s not about the vaccine but why are we able to force someone else to do it. It’s not my job to mandate a medical procedure,” Brooks said. “I hate masks, but when I leave I can take the mask off but I can’t take the vaccine out.”
Specifics of the bill
HB 60 primarily amends the civil rights portions of the Utah Code on Commerce and Trade. It would add immunity status to other bases of prohibited forms of discrimination in the code alongside race, sex, religion or ancestry.
This would prevent businesses and most government entities from requiring proof of immunization status as a condition of employment.
“It still allows employers to ask,” Brooks said. “You don’t have to give it up. You can’t lose your job.”
The bill provides exemptions such as schools, colleges and universities, child care facilities, long-term care facilities and most health care facilities.
Brooks said schools and health care entities already have procedures in place “and do it well.” He also noted that education and medical institutions have federal mandates by which they abide that supersede those of the state.
“There is a carve-out for schools and medical facilities because they have federal implications,” Brooks said.
Previously, Gov. Spencer Cox has said he would veto a bill that would restrict whether employers could mandate the COVID-19 vaccine.
On Thursday, during the taping of the PBS Utah Monthly Governor’s News Conference program, the governor didn’t say whether HB 60 would be dead upon arrival to his desk, saying he will “see where it goes.” But he also reiterated that he isn’t a fan of any bill that would tell businesses what they should do in regard to COVID-19.
“I don’t think we should be mandating, telling businesses and people what they need to do with regards to this epidemic. And if I’m being consistent, that also means we shouldn’t mandate businesses with their requirements,” Cox said. “We already have an exception for employees that I signed. They have the ability to opt out of any vaccine requirements.”
At the same time, while Cox said he doesn’t want to see what he calls divisive bills coming out of the legislature, he said Utah is nearing an end to the pandemic phase of COVID-19 and it’s time businesses lift vaccine requirements on their own, applauding the Utah Jazz’s move to do so on Wednesday.
“Most Utahns are ready to move on from all of this debate and discussion that has been so divisive around the variant, I’m ready to be done with all COVID bills,” Cox said. “I think the market will take care of that. And I suspect that over the next few weeks, we’ll see that the few remaining vaccine requirements go away from businesses.”
Health officials worry about herd immunity
The opposition to HB 60 comes from two groups: Public health experts who say it will get in the way of achieving herd immunity and business officials who say it is government overreach.
Dr. Ellen Arch, a pediatric geneticist, is concerned that less encouragement for people to be immunized will mean the reappearance of diseases that seemingly have been eradicated like measles and mumps, not to mention more opportunity for COVID-19 variants. She cited the reappearance of measles in some places nationwide over the last few years in areas that have seen a drop in immunizations.
“Wherever we have large groups of people refusing vaccines, we have outbreaks of measles and whooping cough among young children who are not yet fully vaccinated,” Arch said. “Most people have never seen or heard of these diseases because of vaccines.
“If we have large swathes of a population unvaccinated against viruses like these, then, when we have outbreaks, we run the risk of rapid spread of disease, often affecting our children the most. Can there be a healthy environment with only a select number of people immunized? My answer is absolutely no.”
Concern also was raised by Rep. Jordan Teuscher, who while overall supporting the bill during a Tuesday meeting of the Utah House Business and Labor Committee was worried the bill could hinder protection against a future outbreak.
“This swings too far,” Teuscher said. “I think of the movie ‘Contagion.’ What happens if there’s an extreme disease?”
History of vaccine mandates
To Brooks and other proponents of the bill, government vaccine mandates do more to discourage people from getting immunized.
That is also a view expressed previously by Dr. David Blodgett, director of the Southwest Utah Public Health Department, who said at a meeting of the Southwest Utah Public Health Board in August that mandates spur more division along political and ideological lines.
Brooks cited the rollout of previous vaccines that he said weren’t mandated.
“With polio and mumps, none of them are forced to do it. We never did this before,” Brooks said in regard to mandates for vaccines, including those for COVID-19. “If it’s so good, why force people to do it. We talk about the free market.”
While vaccines for polio, measles and mumps were not initially mandated, all three were later mandated for children as part of the 1977 Childhood Immunization Initiative enacted by the Centers for Disease Control as well as an act of Congress.
But initially, the rollout of the polio vaccine wasn’t mandated but was made successful by a large public relations campaign by the group March of Dimes. The mumps vaccine didn’t come into wide use until it was mandated for children as part of the MMR (a combined measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine in the early 1970s.
Vaccine mandates were championed as early as the first years of the nation by Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and George Washington, who wrote “I would rather move for a law to compell (sic) the masters of families to inoculate every child born within a certain limitted (sic) time under severe penalties.” Washington’s inoculation mandates for his revolutionary armies continues today as a U.S. military practice.
Massachusetts passed the nation’s first vaccine mandate for smallpox in 1810 and most states followed suit, but that led to a century of opposition that included anti-vaccine groups, fake vaccination cards and people using burn marks to fake the mark left by a smallpox vaccine.
That culminated in a 1905 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled vaccine mandates were constitutional. The Supreme Court revisited that decision last month when it struck down an attempt by President Joe Biden’s administration to require businesses with more than 100 employees to require COVID-19 vaccinations, but affirmed the ability for most health care facilities to mandate the vaccine – one of the reasons Brooks cited for health care facilities being exempted from his bill.
Smallpox was ultimately eradicated, with the last known case in 1977.
The business case for and against
Another criticism leveled against the bill comes from some business leaders, who say it may remove one mandate, but still has government dictate how it can hire its own employees.
That sentiment comes from a statement by Utah Tech Leads, an organization that represents 6,500 tech companies in Utah.
“A mandate is a mandate is a mandate,” the statement reads. “Utah companies do best when the government is a tool and a partner. Interference in that relationship can be overwhelmingly damaging and unwittingly lead to legal and financial strain in attempts to comply with state and federal law.”
While ultimately voting in support for the bill during House Business and Labor Committee meeting Tuesday, Rep. Jon Hawkins, R, expressed concerns that while trying to remove one government mandate, it was creating another.
“Where my concern lies with this bill is this bill turns around and does its own forcing,” Hawkins said. “The liberty should apply the whole way around. If a business applies that decision and I don’t like it, I don’t have to go there.”
In a statement, the Utah Democratic Party called the bill an example of “Republican hypocrisy,” adding it touts “small government and personal freedom while simultaneously overruling Utah businesses’ ability to make decisions that are best for them, their employees and their customers.”
But during the same committee meeting Tuesday, Tiffany Keim, who is co-founder and owner of the Teriyaki Grill eatery chain that includes locations in St. George and Cedar City, spoke in favor of the bill. She said it removes business owners from the position of acting as a kind of vaccine police.
“We feed all walks of life. A space where everyone feels welcome and we do not discriminate. These mandates put my employees in a confrontational position,” Keim said. “We are not in the policing business. Adults should have the ability to make adult decisions about their health.”
As far as businesses that have a more national reach, Brooks said the bill will apply to them as well. This includes the NBA’s Utah Jazz, which had required proof of COVID-19 vaccination to attend games until that was rescinded on Tuesday. That would also affect airlines that fly out of St. George Regional Airport like United and Delta, which require most employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Brooks said that ultimately, the keyword for him is discrimination.
“Employers can recommend people get vaccinated but they can’t require proof,” Brooks said. “The key to this whole thing is the discrimination part.”
Status of the bill
HB 60 passed the House Business and Labor Committee on Tuesday in a 9-4 vote and advanced to the House floor.
A similar bill – HB 63 Covid-19 Vaccine Exemptions – that requires employees to exempt workers from a COVID-19 vaccine requirement with a note from a primary care provider also passed the committee Tuesday in a 9-1 vote and moves on to the House.
Updated 12 p.m., Feb. 17: Comments from Gov. Spencer Cox.
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