OKLAHOMA CITY – Hostility toward vaccination mandates is manifested in measures pre-filed for the 2022 session of the Oklahoma Legislature.
Senate Bill 1128 by Sen. Blake Stephens, R-Tahlequah, would create the Employee Liberty and Freedom Act. It would prohibit companies from requiring any employee to “submit to or take” any vaccination, injection, shot or medication for any virus or disease “as a condition of continued employment.”
SB 1095 by Sen. Jake Merrick, R-Yukon, would prohibit the State of Oklahoma and its political subdivisions (such as counties and municipalities), private entities and hospitals, from requiring a vaccination to prevent SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19 “for any reason” whatsoever, including as a condition of employment, professional licensure, educational certification or degree, admission to any place of business or entertainment, or access to any mode of transportation.
Senate Bill 1106, the “Citizen Health Mandate Protection Act” was filed by Sen. Rob Standridge, R-Norman.
It provides that an employee could sue his/ her employer for actual and punitive damages if the worker experienced any injury or illness that could be attributed to a vaccination or “medicinal treatment program” mandated by the employer as a condition of continued employment. The minimum award for punitive damages would be $1 million, the bill stipulates.
An “employer” is defined in the bill as any person or entity that has one or more employees, including all private-sector and state public-sector employers.
The Pentagon has not backed down from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s insistence that all National Guard units, including those in Oklahoma, comply with a COVID-19 vaccination mandate. The Air National Guard’s deadline has already passed, but the Army National Guard deadline for vaccination is the end of June next year.
The U.S. Marine Corps booted 103 of its members for refusing to submit to a COVID-19 vaccination, the service announced Dec. 16, and the Air Force discharged 27 service members.
The governors of Iowa, Wyoming, Alaska, Mississippi and Nebraska have joined Oklahoma’s governor in the GOP’s resistance to President Biden’s directives that the federal workforce, the military and government contractors be immunized.
In a related matter, Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor and Ascension St. John Health System in Tulsa have agreed to a ceasefire in their dispute about the hospital’s vaccination mandate for its employees. A Tulsa County district judge gave O’Connor until Dec. 17 to file a response to points Ascension raised in the case.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court recently denied a bid by New York health care workers to block that state’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement. To date the nation’s highest court has let stand COVID-19 vaccination mandates from Indiana, Maine and New York.
The nationwide death toll from COVID-19 has surpassed 800,000. The COVID-19 death toll in Oklahoma totaled 12,326 on Wednesday, the State Health Department reported.