About 100 million Americans and thousands of local workers could be impacted by President Joe Biden’s plan to require employers with more than 100 employees to mandate COVID-19 vaccines or require weekly testing.
Biden last week announced all federal employees and contractors would be required to get a vaccine, eliminating the previous option for weekly testing in lieu of a vaccine. Workers at all health care facilities that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding will also have to be fully vaccinated.
Biden further ordered the Occupational Health and Safety Organization (OSHA) to implement a policy requiring private employers to mandate the vaccine or weekly testing.
State, local leaders react
Gov. Eric Holcomb called the federal mandates “a bridge too far” and a slight against personal freedom. He issued a statement Friday emphasizing that private businesses, not the government, can “make the decision best for them that will keep their doors open.”
“I believe the vaccine is the No. 1 tool that will protect us and our loved ones against COVID-19. It is the tool that will end the pandemic,” Holcomb said in the statement. “However, I strongly believe it’s not the state or federal government’s role to issue a vaccine mandate upon citizens and private businesses. This is the approach our administration has taken all along.”
Though he has recently made pleas for more Hoosiers to get vaccinated, Holcomb said “it is fundamentally a citizen’s right to choose whether or not to get the vaccine.”
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said in a statement Thursday he is prepared to take legal action.
“My team and I, along with other like-minded attorneys general, are reviewing all legal action on how to stand against these authoritarian actions by the Biden administration,” Rokita said. “We will be prepared to file suit if Biden seeks illegal actions restricting Hoosiers’ liberties.”
Some large Indiana employers including Eli Lilly and several health care systems with sites across the state already mandate the vaccine, but other large employers such as Cummins have been hesitant to mandate the vaccine to leave open the freedom to choose.
Local leaders did not think a mandate would be possible due to the state law banning vaccine passports. But, with a federal workforce safety policy, that could be moot.
So far, local officials have not begun planning to implement a mandate because they are not sure of the logistics of gathering health information or requiring testing for potentially dozens of employees who may refuse the vaccine.
Both Franklin Mayor Steve Barnett and Greenwood Mayor Mark Myers are taking a wait-and-see approach because the official guidance from OSHA has not been made public and because, whatever that guidance is, legal challenges are imminent, they said.
“It is likely that the president’s proposed vaccine mandate will be tested in court. My team and I are closely monitoring the situation and the impact on Greenwood residents and businesses,” Myers said.
The Johnson County Board of Commissioners hasn’t discussed the potential impact on the 565 county workers or the health department’s testing site, said Shena Johnson, county attorney.
School districts across the county also haven’t started discussions on the mandate because guidance remains up in the air, spokespeople said via email.
With a federal mandate, local governments and large employers would be faced with implementing a mandate they find problematic. Local officials who are vaccinated have trouble mandating others to do so, several said.
“I believe people should be vaccinated, but it should be their choice to get vaccinated,” Barnett said. “I encourage our city employees to get vaccinated, but I’m not mandating anyone to get vaccinated or tested until I see some guidance on how our state and the federal government is going to handle it.”
Impact on health care workforce
At Johnson Memorial Health, about 900 employees would be subject to the vaccine mandate when it goes into effect. An estimated 70% of employees have already been vaccinated but, due to the vaccine passport law, the hospital does not have official data, said Dr. David Dunkle, president and CEO.
Though some health systems have, Dunkle has been hesitant to implement a vaccine mandate because the vaccine passport law made it impossible to verify vaccination status, and people should have the freedom to make their own health decisions, he said.
The mandate comes after pleas from Biden for unvaccinated people to reconsider have gone unanswered by more than 40% of the country.
Nearly 54% of U.S. residents are fully vaccinated, and nearly 64% have received one dose of the two-dose vaccines, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In Indiana, 54.1% of residents 12 and older are fully vaccinated. In Johnson County, 60.6% of Johnson County residents 12 and older are fully vaccinated, according to the Indiana Department of Health.
COVID-19 cases have risen around the country, and hospitals are taxed. The COVID-19 vaccine is hoped to curb the spread of the delta variant and bring an end to the widespread public health threat that remains.
Johnson Memorial Hospital last week exceeded its previous record of 19 COVID-19 patients twice, with 22 COVID-19 patients being treated for complications due to the virus on two separate days, Dunkle said.
By Monday, the hospital was down to 12 patients, but it likely won’t stay that low for long, as more than 100 county residents test positive for the virus daily. Of those 12 patients, five were on a ventilator, a statistic not seen since early on in the pandemic, he said.
The mandate is expected to take some pressure off health care facilities that have been challenged by staffing shortages due, in part, to partial vaccine mandates, including long-term care facilities and several hospital systems that implemented a vaccine mandate on their own volition.
The Indiana Health Care Association and Indiana Center for Assisted Living previously expressed concerns that a mandate exclusively for long-term care facilities would exacerbate staffing issues they were already facing.
“This policy will help retain critical workforce to care for our state’s elderly and disabled populations, and will help alleviate some of the staffing challenges that long-term care providers are currently facing in Indiana and across the country,” association president Zach Cattell said in a statement. “Applying this policy more broadly will also help protect our nation’s most vulnerable, who often interact with a variety of health care professionals on a regular basis.”
Politics, court battles next obstacle
Politics surrounding the vaccine has created an obstacle to solving the public health crisis, Dunkle said.
Politics aside, there is a sound medical and historical basis for a vaccine mandate, he said.
“This has been politicized. This isn’t a Republican thing or a Democrat thing. I do believe in individual choice. I sometimes question mandates. But when I look at how other vaccines are required to do things, I don’t think another is an overreach,” Dunkle said.
The mandate would be enforced by OSHA, which oversees workplace safety. Getting the vaccine is couched as a threat to health and safety in the workplace.
Similarly, several vaccines are required to attend school, and to enter the United States on a visa.
Rokita did not elaborate on the legal strategy he would employ to fight the mandate, but other prominent Republicans have also said the mandate is unconstitutional.
Previous U.S. Supreme Court cases challenging vaccine mandates have been based on the due process clause of the 14th amendment, but the argument did not hold up.
The Supreme Court previously ruled in the 1904 case, Jacobson vs. Massachusetts, that a state could create a law requiring vaccinations. A 1922 case, Zucht v. King, upheld Jacobson vs. Massachusetts in a challenge to a vaccine mandate by a Texas school district. Neither of the cases, though, made a decision on the constitutionality of a federal mandate.
Daily Journal reporter Andy Bell-Baltaci and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
