Michigan’s H.B. 4471, styled the “Informed Consent in the Workplace Act,” is a fine example of what states are doing to protect workers from vaccine mandates. Its passage, and the passage of similar measures across the nation, will require significant grassroots effort.
The White House- and media-inspired crescendo of calls for employers to force vaccine mandates upon their employees under threat of termination has created a new round of COVID terror in the American workplace. “My constituents have been calling me in tears,” reports Michigan State Representative Beth Griffin, chairwoman of the Michigan House Subcommittee on Workforce, Trades and Talent, “saying the media’s lack of coverage from emerging peer reviewed studies is horrible … and they are angry because only one side of this vaccination issue and discussion is acceptable.”
Florida and Montana have passed legislation prohibiting employers from making employees demonstrate proof of vaccination status. Similar legislation of various types is pending or planned in 39 additional states. However, these legislative moves have come up against stiff opposition. In response, legislators are turning to their constituents for help. For example, on August 30, hundreds of patriotic Americans gathered in Parkersburg, West Virginia, for a rally hosted by State Senator Mike Azinger and Delegate Roger Conley. As reported by television station WTAP, the legislators called upon Governor Jim Justice to initiate a special session for the purpose of protecting workers from vaccine mandates: “[Conley] says if Justice doesn’t call a special session, he is asking constituents to ask legislators to support doing so.”
The establishment media is hiding the fact that, while this movement to prohibit employer vaccine mandates is driven by Americans of many different backgrounds, the effort is fully supported by scientists, doctors, and front-line healthcare workers armed with the best and latest peer reviewed research data. As Representative Griffin stated, “Our Michigan businesses are being done a monumental disservice … by politically motivated government agencies.”
The initial hearing for H.B. 4471, a bill to prohibit employers from enforcing a vaccine mandate on employees, provides a complete case study on the matter. The hearing featured witnesses to address the constitutionality of states taking action to protect workers, the scientific evidence to support the bill, the fairness of the proposed legislation, ample evidence of the need for swift action, and the enormity of constituent support for the law. The hearing also highlighted the source and reasons for opposition.
Constitutionality
Is it constitutionally permissible for states to ban employers from enforcing vaccine mandates?
Longtime U.S. Representative Dr. Ron Paul of Texas was noted for pointing out that any bill he considered first had to pass a test of constitutionality. If Congress didn’t have authority under the Constitution to act, he didn’t need to read the rest of the bill. Dr. Paul thus became affectionately known as “Dr. No” by constitutionalists who appreciated his principled stand.
Likewise, regarding the issue of states banning employers from forcing vaccine mandates upon their employees, the lawfulness of state prohibitions of such policies has come into some debate among conservative and libertarian thinkers.
Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, for example, has come out strongly in opposition to protecting workers from vaccine mandates. “When leaders overstep their authority, that is how we break this country, and if government starts acting unconstitutionally, even if it’s doing something that we like, that’s a dangerous path to walk down,” she said. “It is not conservative to grow government and to tell businesses what to do and how to treat their employees.”
Constitutional expert William Wagner, a former federal judge, past legal counsel to the U.S. Senate, and distinguished professor emeritus of the University of Florida and Western Michigan Law School, strongly disagrees with Governor Noem’s constitutional analysis. In the Michigan hearing on H.B. 4471, Wagner specifically gave the proposed legislation a constitutional endorsement.
Wagner points out that states have significant legislative powers regarding the health, safety, and welfare of the population. This is clearly differentiated from the limited and enumerated powers granted to the national government by the U.S. Constitution. State governments have much broader “police powers.” Wagner testified that “the law is rationally related to a legitimate government purpose” and cited provisions of the Michigan Constitution. The cited provisions of the Michigan Constitution that empower the legislature to act in this area are prevalent in other state or commonwealth constitutions throughout the United States.
State laws on safety conditions in the workplace, maximum number of hours of regular pay before overtime pay applies, mandatory opportunities for lunch breaks, and similar types of regulatory provisions are commonplace and accepted, even in South Dakota. Accordingly, prohibiting an employer from forcing an employee to inject something into his body seems like an odd place for Governor Noem to cling to laissez-faire principles.
Wagner points out that the proposed law is legally beneficial to businesses as well, because the practical enforcement of vaccine mandates could well lead to ruinous litigation resulting from infringement of sincerely held religious beliefs and medical exceptions that exist in federal law, as further detailed in a related article from The New American.
Scientific Evidence
Any suggestion that vaccines are not 100-percent safe, 100-percent effective, and perfectly suitable for all people of all ages is a sure way to get banned by Facebook or YouTube. The same media sources that trumpet this vaccine myth are pushing the narrative that “Bunker Joe” won the 2020 election in what they claim was the fairest, most secure election in the history of all elections. Anyone not infected with a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome is rightfully skeptical. Not unlike the election analogy, evidence as to the potential dangers of the mRNA vaccine is both clear and abundant and the basis for skepticism is well founded.
Dr. Christina Parks holds a Ph.D. in cellular and molecular biology from the University of Michigan Medical School. Testifying in favor of H.B. 4471, Dr. Parks stated, “Vaccine requirements and mandates are based upon the faulty assumption that the vaccine in question prevents transmission of the pathogen.” Regarding the mRNA vaccines, she points out “they were never designed to do that.” Dr. Parks further cites the July 30 media statement from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky that new data demonstrates that “Delta infection resulted in similarly high SARS-CoV-2 viral loads in vaccinated and unvaccinated people.” Dr. Parks states that policy cannot be based upon “the hope of what we think something will do or want it to do,” but rather “what the data actually tells us.”
Citing new peer-reviewed scientific data on the Delta variant of COVID, Dr. Parks pointed out that the vaccines are geared to a different virus. And the medical evidence is clear that the nature of the mRNA vaccine is such that not only does it not prevent infection by the Delta variant, but people who are vaccinated and then infected with the Delta variant are at “increased risk” of even more severe reactions and potential for hospitalization than an unvaccinated person.
Dr. Parks further pointed out that “as a Ph.D., I am a member of the most vaccine hesitant group” because “as Ph.D.’s we actually know how to read peer reviewed scientific studies.” Dr. Parks, who is herself black, also notes that “70% of African-Americans have not taken this vaccine. Why? Because they don’t trust their government.” The reasons for distrust provided include the CDC’s “Tuskegee Experiment” and the 2012 incident in which whistleblower William Thompson revealed that the CDC shredded evidence that the guidelines for the MMR vaccine caused increased rates of autism in black male children. Concluding this thought, Dr. Parks notes that since black people have good cause to distrust the CDC, employer vaccine mandates in the workplace could have an overtly racist impact of excluding the black population from the workforce and educational opportunities.
Dr. James Neuenschwander, M.D., is a board-certified physician with 30 years of experience in integrated and emergency medicine. Dr. Neuenschwander’s testimony in support of H.B. 4471 addressed the safety of the vaccines and the medical justification of the vaccine. Citing the studies published relating to the Pfizer vaccine, the doctor pointed out that the rate of severe side effects of the vaccine were 10.7 percent for minors and 8.8 percent for adults. “These are the kind of side effects that knock you off your feet, keep you in bed, keep you from participating in life.” As compared to non-mRNA vaccines, this is more than double the rate of those vaccines.
What about the worst side effect — death? “The answer is we just don’t know.… The studies are too small.” However, Dr. Neuenschwander cited the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, which is co-sponsored by the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It is widely accepted that vaccine injuries are significantly under-reported to VAERS, but historical data is useful and reporting in VAERS has shaped public policy in the past.
Over the course of the entire history of VAERS, from its inception in 1991 to 2019, there were a total of 9,864…