Hoosiers: Indiana Senate Could Kill the Vaccine Bill — Act Now!

Our Stand: At-A-Glance

• As you may know, Governor Holcomb just renewed Indiana’s public health emergency a 23rd time. He is waiting on the General Assembly to pass a bill with provisions that he says will help him finally put an end to the emergency.
• The General Assembly has two options:
  • The legislature can pass SB3, which would only put into place the provisions Holcomb said he wants before he will end the state of emergency.
  • Or lawmakers can pass HB1001, which would include both the measures the governor wants AND safeguards from mandated vaccines in the workplace.
• As advocates, we must do all we can to make sure our lawmakers choose the second option. We will likely only see Covid vaccine protections this session if we tie them directly to the emergency provisions Holcomb wants. Without that connection, Holcomb is unlikely to sign a stand-alone vaccine protection bill. “I have long said very openly that I believe that the employers, the businesses, are in the best position to determine how to keep their employees safe,” Holcomb told IndyStar in December. “I trust them to make that decision. Now I will be paying very close attention to every word in whatever bill makes its way.”
• HB1001 already passed the House, but now we must get it through the Senate. This is by far the greater challenge. Whether Chairman Ed Charbonneau is willing to even give the bill a hearing is an unknown. If he locks this bill up in his committee, vaccine protections are likely dead this year. We cannot let the Senate kill HB1001.
• Please take action and tell Chairman Charbonneau to schedule a hearing on HB1001 immediately and also ask his Senate co-sponsor Mark Messmer to do all he can to protect this bill and push it forward. If we do not speak out loudly now for Covid-19 vaccine protections in the workplace, we are in danger of losing them all together. We must unify behind HB1001 — the vehicle that contains safeguards for workers — or else we may end up with nothing. No other bill has as much momentum behind it as this one.