VACCINE MANDATES REASONABLE BY DEFINITION

The power of collective bargaining laws complicates the question of whether public employees can be required to get COVID-19 vaccinations before returning to their workplaces. It’s a big reason why San Diego Unified officials have urged all employees to get vaccinated but never made it mandatory.

Private employers, however, do have the right to require their workers to take the COVID-19 vaccine, subject to a handful of legally protected exceptions for disabilities and religious beliefs. That was the Dec. 16 guidance from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in keeping with more than a century of court rulings — dating to a 1905 Massachusetts case involving mandatory smallpox vaccinations in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld vaccine laws that were “reasonably required for the safety of the public” while noting that individual liberty was not absolute. The California Supreme Court and Legislature have also upheld private employers’ right to make workers follow their edicts so long as they don’t constitute discrimination involving race, national origin, sex, age, disability, marital status, sexual orientation or religion.

This doesn’t mean there won’t be lawsuits over vaccine mandates. As seen in the opposition to student vaccination requirements, some people believe individual liberty is absolute, and some people are hesitant or opposed to getting the vaccines that are so crucial to winning the fight against COVID-19.

But with more than 550,000 Americans dead because of COVID-19, having employers act to prevent new deaths — and to promote confidence among employees that they can safely return to workplaces — is the very definition of “reasonably required.”