President Joe Biden’s order for approximately two-thirds of the U.S. workforce to be vaccinated adds to the patchwork of vaccine tasks, aimed at pushing more people to be vaccinated and controlling the pandemic.
The president largely refused to issue federal authorizations, but in recent months, many states, companies, and schools have issued their own authorizations to inoculate reluctant or resisting Americans.
According to the White House, there are currently nearly 80 million eligible Americans who have not received a dose of the vaccine. Health experts believe this helps the delta variant to flourish in many parts of the country during the summer.
In his speech announcing the new order on September 9, 2021, Biden said: “Unvaccinated hospitals are overcrowded…There is no place to accommodate heart attack, pancreatitis or cancer patients.” “We have always been patient, but ours Patience is fading. Your refusal cost us all.”
I am a law professor and I have written articles on the legal issues of vaccination law. Although it is not clear how many people are covered by overlapping vaccine regulations, they are now likely to affect the vast majority of eligible Americans.
Biden’s new order
In total, the latest vaccine requirements cover more than 100 million workers-it is unknown how many of these people have not been vaccinated.
The largest part of Biden’s order involves having the Occupational Safety and Health Administration establish a rule that companies with 100 or more employees ensure that their employees are fully vaccinated or tested for COVID-19 every week. Although less than 2% of US companies have 100 or more employees, according to recent census data, they employ more than 80 million employees.
The penalty for violations may be a fine of up to $14,000 per violation by the employer.
Biden will also require federal employees, government contractors, and patients receiving Medicare and Medicaid to be vaccinated—about 20 million people—without the option of receiving frequent testing.
In addition, the new plan urges large entertainment venues such as concert halls and stadiums to require vaccination certificates when entering, and requires companies to provide employees with paid time off so that they can be vaccinated and recover from possible vaccine-related side effects.
AP Photo/Mary Altaf
State and local government
Approximately half of the states in the United States have established their own COVID-19 vaccine regulations. In some cases, exemptions may be allowed for medical or religious reasons.
Although these regulations vary from state to state, the provisions usually cover a combination of government employees and contractors, health care workers, teachers, and prison employees in a state operating environment. Most of the regulations in these states allow frequent testing and wearing masks as an alternative to vaccination.
These statewide vaccine regulations almost only exist in states with Democratic governors. Although Maryland, Massachusetts, and Vermont are all led by the Republican Party, they also have vaccine regulations, but their populations tend to be liberal.
California and New York City have some of the strictest regulations. For example, California seems to be the only state that needs to prove a negative test for COVID-19 in order to participate in an indoor event with 1,000 or more people. New York City requires vaccinations for a wider variety of indoor venues, including restaurants and gyms, no matter how many people there are.
Approximately 20 states (all led by Republican governors) took the opposite approach and passed legislation or executive orders to prohibit mandatory vaccination. Policies vary, but state agencies are generally prohibited from implementing any type of COVID-19 vaccine authorization, private companies are prohibited from requiring their customers to be vaccinated, or both.
Montana is currently the only state that prohibits private employers from compulsory vaccinations for their employees.
The new federal vaccine regulations will take precedence over some of these state laws and may face legal challenges.
Universities and schools
Many educational institutions have also played an important role in compulsory vaccination.
More than 1,000 American universities have some form of vaccine authorization for students, employees, or both, including many large public universities. In addition to the usual exemptions for medical or religious reasons, some of these regulations also exclude students who study completely remotely.
In August 2021, the US Supreme Court refused to block Indiana University’s vaccine authorization, which covers almost all students and employees, and includes religious and medical exemptions. For this reason, I believe that similar vaccine regulations in other universities may also withstand constitutional review.
At the elementary level, only two states, Oregon and Washington, require almost all K-12 school employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19, while the other seven states require teachers and other employees to be vaccinated or undergo regular testing.
However, in most states, vaccine authorization is determined at the local level-although state laws expressly prohibit it, some cities or regions are still passing authorization. An ongoing survey of 100 large urban school districts across the country found that one in four required teachers to be vaccinated.
Los Angeles is the only major school district in the United States that requires eligible students 12 years and older to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
However, the authorization of vaccines for school children is nothing new. Before the pandemic, every state in the country had some form of mandatory vaccination requirements for K-12 students.
Private enterprise
Before the introduction of new regulations covering private companies, many companies had already decided to require employees to receive injections.
Earlier this year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission gave companies the green light to adopt mandatory vaccination policies as long as they comply with anti-discrimination laws.
Although the company’s initial requirements for the vaccine were slow, the situation has changed recently after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration fully approved the Pfizer vaccine on August 23. Dozens of companies, including Wal-Mart, Goldman Sachs and Google, now require employees to be vaccinated.
Health experts still don’t know how many more people need to be vaccinated to stop the spread of the coronavirus. But these orders, if supported by the court, may help the United States to close relations.
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