OKLAHOMA CITY — In his Sept. 9 address to the American people: “Path Out of the Pandemic: President Biden’s COVID-19 Action Plan,” the president said, in part, that millions of American workers — both federal employees and those working in private businesses with 100 or more employees — would be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
“Our patience is wearing thin,” Biden said, emphatic that the quickest way out of the pandemic is for all Americans to be vaccinated. But there has been pushback, particularly from Republicans and private business operators.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt quickly responded to the president’s plan.
“It is not the government’s role to dictate to private businesses what to do,” Stitt said in a prepared statement released soon after the president’s address. “Once again, President Biden is demonstrating his complete disregard for individual freedoms and states’ rights. As long as I am governor, there will be no government vaccine mandates in Oklahoma.
“My administration will continue to defend Oklahoma values and fight back against the Biden administration’s federal overreach.”
Governors in South Dakota, Utah, Texas, Florida, Ohio and South Carolina, among others, have all said they would fight the president’s mandate.
Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor echoed Stitt’s message in his own statement.
“We respect the right of Oklahoma businesses and individuals to make health care decisions for themselves and their families,” O’Connor said. “My office will vigorously oppose any attempt by the federal government to mandate vaccines. We are preparing litigation to stand up for our rights and defend the rule of law against the overreach of the federal government.”
U.S. Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK 4), who represents Southwest Oklahoma as part of Oklahoma’s Fourth Congressional District, told the Southwest Ledger while he trusts the science behind the current iteration of COVID-19 vaccines, he does not believe they should be mandatory.
“I made the personal decision to get vaccinated because I believe the benefits of doing so greatly outweigh any potential risks,” Cole said by email Monday. “Moreover, I trust the groundbreaking research of our brilliant scientists, who worked around the clock to discover, develop and deliver life-saving vaccines to fight COVID-19 and restore our way of life. As I have for months, I continue to urge my fellow Oklahomans to receive a vaccine to protect not only themselves but their families, friends, loved ones and communities. However, while I strongly encourage people to get vaccinated, the choice to do so should not be by federal mandate. The decision to get vaccinated must be based on good information and science, not force.”
While state and federal legislators, largely Republican, have expressed reticence toward a federal vaccine mandate, decrying such a move as a violation of civil liberties, the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma said they believe such a mandate would actually enhance a person’s civil liberties.
Megan Lambert, legal director of Oklahoma City-based ACLU of Oklahoma, said the position of the civil rights organization is in line with the national ACLU position.
“We believe vaccine mandates further civil liberties by protecting the rights of people with disabilities, by enabling people to safely engage in public activities like attending church services and organizing protests, and by better supporting Black and brown people who are disproportionately impacted by COVID-19,” Lambert said.
According to University of Oklahoma Constitutional Law Professor Joseph Thai, Lambert’s assertion may be well in line with previous court rulings.
“For well over a century, the Supreme Court has upheld vaccine mandates as a constitutional exercise of government power to protect public health from communicable diseases,” Thai said.
Citing a 1905 ruling by the Supreme Court in “Jacobson v. Massachusetts,” Thai said the court recognized that “real liberty for all” could not exist in an environment in which individual rights were so absolute as to negate the injury the exercise of such rights may do to others.
“So, in upholding a local smallpox vaccine mandate, the Court concluded, ‘Upon the principle of self-defense, of paramount necessity, a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members,’” Thai said.
“The highly transmissible and potentially deadly Delta variant makes a strong public health case — and hence a strong constitutional case — for a (COVID-19) vaccine mandate. In addition, federal workers and contract workers will have a harder time arguing against a vaccine mandate than the general public,” Thai said. “Like other workers, they are subject to workplace requirements by their employer, and reasonable requirements to promote a safe and healthy working environment are generally constitutional.”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said any mandate would include “limited exceptions for legally recognized reasons, such as disability or religious objections.”
The White House said federal workers who refuse to be vaccinated will first receive counseling, and, ultimately, face termination if they persist in their refusal.
Companies with more than 100 employees could be fined approximately $14,000 per violation for not complying with the proposed mandate.