Employers of all kinds should have a right to protect their employees, customers, patients, and students from people who pose health risks because of vaccine refusal.
That, in fact, is the law in America — and has been for a very long time — with a caveat.
As ABC News says here,
“Employers have the power to set vaccine mandates for various diseases — including flu, measles, mumps, and in May the EEOC said employers can also require staffers to be inoculated against COVID-19. However, workplaces must make accommodations to workers who decline the vaccine due to health conditions or a religious belief.
“Accommodations might include allowing an unvaccinated employee to wear a face mask and social distance while at work, working a modified shift, getting periodically tested for COVID-19 or being given the opportunity to telework or accept a reassignment, according to the guidance.”
Bottom line, vaccine mandates per se aren’t grounds to sue; failure to provide reasonable accommodation is. At least that’s where it sits now.
Some people are hesitant to get vaccinated against Covid-19 because they’re worried about how safe the vaccines are. But the science doesn’t support that argument; no shortcuts were taken in releasing vaccines for use, nor are there any indications they’re unsafe.
For some anti-vaxxers, it’s about personal freedom. But there’s an old saying that, “your freedom to swing your fist stops where my nose starts.” The problem is they go out in public and expose others. And when they do, it’s no longer about their freedom, but about endangering others. They can refuse to be vaccinated, and no one is saying they can’t, nor is anyone getting jabbed who doesn’t agree to be jabbed — not one single person in the U.S. has been involuntarily vaccinated. But neither does anyone have a right to a job. The tradeoff, “we have a job for you, if you’re vaccinated,” is a fair one when it’s necessary to keep others safe.
The examples given a reasonable person could conclude such employees should be immunized, but even so the employer must offer accommodations, and in fact also pay for the vaccination or make available through medical insurance. There are many jobs that frankly an employer cannot show a reasonable need for a vaccine requirement. Nor should government substitute employers authority for what it should do or enforce what it cannot do. For instance marijuana is still illegal under Federal statutes, and an employer can fire an employee for failing a drug test even in Washington state. If though marijuana were legal under state and federal law then an employer would need more than a drug test to fire an employee. [This comment has been edited.]
I deleted the portion of your comment about government mandated vaccinations because it’s off topic. This posting is about employer mandates, not government mandates. And also because no government, federal or state, has mandated Covid-19 vaccinations, so it’s pointless to bring up that issue.
An at-will employer, which is most private-sector employers, could still fire an employee for using marijuana even if it wasn’t illegal under federal law. They wouldn’t have to make any showing of justification to the EEOC or any other government regulator; that arises only if an employer fires an employee for a prohibited reason, e.g. racial discrimination. In the absence of such a prohibition, an at-will employer can fire for any reason it wants to, including no reason at all.