In a push designed to treat unvaccinated Americans like an oppressed group, Republicans are reportedly pursuing a series of bills that would make it illegal to “discriminate” against those who choose not to get the COVID-19 vaccine. At least one state—Montana—has already signed such a bill into law, and according to Axios, others around the country are following suit.
Montana’s law prevents businesses such as grocery stores and restaurants from refusing customers based on their vaccination status. And employers in the state cannot consider an applicant’s vaccination status when making hiring decisions. In a similar move, Alabama passed a law prohibiting schools and universities from mandating COVID vaccine requirements for students, faculty, and staff, while other government institutions and private companies are also barred from stopping service to unvaccinated patrons. In essence, these types of laws give the same protection to unvaccinated Americans as those who face discrimination based on their race, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity. “When we think about the normal discrimination statutes…we have protected classes based on something that is sort of inherent to you,” Lowell Pearson, a managing partner at Husch Blackwell, told Axios. “But vaccination status you certainly can control.”
In several states, Republican governors have passed mandates banning the use of vaccine passports, meaning businesses and venues cannot ask for proof that their customers are vaccinated. Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Idaho, Iowa, Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming all have vaccine-passport bans.
Ironically, many of these efforts are taking place as the more contagious delta variant continues to spread, in states where vaccination rates are already at rock bottom. In Montana, approximately 43% of the state’s population is fully vaccinated. Around one third of Alabama residents have been fully vaccinated, and the state is currently experiencing an increase in COVID cases, according to The New York Times. Last week, CDC director Rochelle Walensky made it clear that those Americans who have recently died after contracting COVID-19 were unvaccinated. “Preliminary data from several states over the last few months suggest that 99.5% of deaths from COVID-19 in the United States were in unvaccinated people,” she said in a press briefing.
Despite the obvious danger, right-wing pundits with vast megaphones have continued to discourage their audiences from getting vaccinated. Last week Charlie Kirk, the cofounder of pro-Trump youth group Turning Point USA, launched a “No Forced Vax” campaign on Tucker Carlson Tonight, promising to “fight back against forced campus vaccinations” and supposedly launching chapters on campuses across the country. Kirk has compared vaccine requirements to South African apartheid, and GOP Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has likened mask mandates and the treatment of unvaccinated Americans to that of Jews in prewar Nazi Germany. In condemning Joe Biden’s door-knocking campaign to get more Americans vaccinated, Tucker Carlson called it “the greatest scandal” he has ever witnessed, and his colleague Laura Ingraham slammed it as “creepy.”
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