On October 29, 2021, Governor Ron DeSantis announced that Florida would convene a special legislative session starting on November 15, 2021, covering COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
“During the special session, we will do everything within our power as a state to protect Floridians from the unconstitutional, un-American, and morally reprehensible overreaches on the part of the federal government.” – Senate President Wilton Simpson and Speaker of the House, Chris Sprowls said in a joint statement.
SB 2006, which passed last session, included language which would prevent government and educational institutions from requiring “vaccine passports” or immunity status and prevent private businesses from requiring customers to show proof of vaccine or immunity status. It also stated that neither the state nor local governments can close businesses or keep students out of in-person instruction at Florida schools. This was a step in the right direction! Today we must continue to make gains and more must be done to protect Floridian’s from being discriminated against for their health status, including a crucial one, protection for employees from their employers against vaccine mandates.
Vaccine status is now the civil rights issue of our time. Americans fought hard to minimize discrimination by expanding state-law protection to include veterans, nursing mothers, caregivers, marijuana use, and genetic information. We must protect the rights of an individual’s choice of medical care and protect those choices from infringement by the government, businesses, educational institutions, social organizations, and private individuals. We need to ensure our entitlement to participate in society and the state without discrimination or repression.
Health Freedom Florida has been pursuing legislators, with health status (vaccine or immunity status) anti-discrimination language, requesting they create a bill from their suggested language. Vaccine mandates permit outright health status (vaccine or immunity status) discrimination. In the workplace by subjecting only some employees to forced masking, invasive testing, and segregation, other areas of discrimination are mounting as we begin to see people having difficulty accessing medical services and procedures for healthcare, and now, paying higher monthly premiums for health insurance. Medical mandates promote intolerance in bodily autonomy, cultural norms, and medical needs, along with destroying medical privacy. Mandates remove business owner rights. We must remind legislators that whatever policies the government, employers and others implement will never suffice as viruses/infections are endless and Biden Administration’s tyrannical orders will only increase by compliance.
There has never been a more critical time to use our collective voices. We must let our legislators know that Florida is now, and will always be, a free state, that our 14th Amendment prevents states, including Florida, from infringing on “the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” Tell legislators that they must be leaders in the fight for medical freedom and put protections in place for all Floridians.