(Updated to correct that employees collect unemployment for being fired not quitting)
The Kansas Legislature raced through its historic special session Monday to pass a bill fighting back against the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates for the nation’s labor force.
It took lawmakers roughly 13 hours at the start of Thanksgiving week to pass a bill that will fine businesses that refuse to waive federal vaccine mandates for religious or medical reasons.
The bill also allows Kansans to collect unemployment if they’re fired for refusing to get vaccinated.
The Senate voted 24-11 to pass the bill while the House voted 77-34 in favor of the legislation, which was negotiated by a conference committee.
The committee rejected two components from the bill: one banning employers from imposing vaccine mandates without approval of the Legislature and another prohibiting employers from discriminating against a worker for not being vaccinated against COVID-19.
The votes showed large swaths of lawmakers – Republican and Democrat – who were listed as absent and not voting on final action Monday night.
Fourteen members in the House were listed as absent and not voting, and five in the Senate were listed as absent and not voting.
The bill now goes to Gov. Laura Kelly, who announced she would sign the legislation. The governor, who recently came out against the federal vaccine mandate heading into a reelection year, offered no other comment.
“I will sign the CCR for HB 2001 when it reaches my desk,” the governor said.
Reacting angrily to the federal government mandates, the Republican-controlled Legislature for the first time in history successfully petitioned the governor to call a special session to address the president’s executive orders requiring vaccines.
“This is about federal mandates, not about if a vaccine works or doesn’t work,” House Speaker Ron Ryckman Jr. told reporters Sunday night before the special session began.
“This is about the federal government inserting themselves between someone’s health and their job,” he said.
Kansas was one of about six states this year that addressed COVID-19 mandates in special sessions, the most recent being Florida, which passed a bill last week prohibiting companies from mandating that all employees get vaccinated and allowing them to choose from various exemptions.
Passage of the bill capped weeks of hearings and sometimes fiery – if not controversial – testimony on how Kansas could fight back against the president’s mandates, which were intended to get more people vaccinated and curtail the spread of COVID-19.
Supporters of the legislation described the debate over the bill as the “battleground of religious liberty and individual rights.”
Opponents said the bill was merely political imagery and would do nothing to substantively protect workers.
They said the bill would put businesses in the untenable position of choosing whether to comply with federal vaccine mandates now being challenged in court or complying with the state mandates enacted by the Legislature.
“I understand that many Kansans are hurt, confused and uncertain as we continue to navigate this pandemic,” Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes said.
“We would like to keep working our jobs and we’d like to make decisions about feeling the weight of our communities on our shoulders. This bill does not do that.
“It does not guarantee that you will have a job regardless of your personal health choice or religious beliefs. Instead, it provides a patina of support while putting Kansas businesses in an impossible position,” she said.
Republican state Sen. Mike Thompson of Shawnee called approval of the bill a “victory for liberty and patriots standing tall across Kansas.”
“Kansans are fed up,” Thompson said.
“Since the mandate, they have been rising up to say this is where it must stop,” he said.
“If we can’t stop this intrusion into our most personal decisions about our health, where does it end?” he said.
Passage of the bill was an about-face from last month when a faction of conservative lawmakers unsuccessfully tried to petition the governor for a special session.
A group of Republican lawmakers who wanted a special session to respond to President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates announced that they had 19 signatures.
They needed two-thirds of the Legislature — or 111 members of the House and Senate — to sign the petition to force Kelly to call a special session.
But the idea of fighting back against the mandates gained momentum when the Legislature created a special committee to examine ways to grapple with the federal government’s vaccine proposals.
The committee held several hearings that ultimately led to the petition calling for the special session, which was narrowly focused on bills dealing with religious and medical exemptions and unemployment benefits.
The bill that passed Monday would set up an administrative process in which employers could be fined up to $10,000 or $50,000 depending on how many people they employ if they don’t waive federal vaccine mandates for religious or medical reasons.
If the employer reinstates a terminated employee with back pay a fine would not be levied.
The bill defined religious beliefs as “theistic and non-theistic moral and ethical beliefs as to what is right and wrong that are sincerely held with the strength of traditional religious views.”
Critics said the definition was broad enough that it could potentially open the door to anyone who wants to cite bogus religions to avoid getting vaccinated.
The bill bars businesses from asking questions to determine the veracity of a claim about a sincerely held religious belief.
The Kansas business community expressed reservations about the legislation, even after it was tweaked in a way so that it no longer gave Kansans the ability to take employers to court if they weren’t exempted from the mandate for religious or medical reasons.
“We are not able to support any mandate or penalties on businesses that impacts their abilities to make informed decisions on how to best maintain their operations and that could lead to unintended consequences,” Kansas Chamber President and CEO Alan Cobb said in a statement.
State Rep. Annie Kuether, a Topeka Democrat, emphasized the lack of business support for the legislation.
“Make no mistake. We do not have the support of businesses of Kansas,” Kuether said.
“I think we need to listen to those who are going to be directly impacted by that decision,” she said.
Democratic state Rep. John Carmichael said the bill only had an illusory appearance of accomplishing anything for workers.
Carmichael said the state would be forced to comply with federal mandates because the federal supremacy clause would override anything the state would enact,
The Wichita lawmaker noted that the federal government vaccine mandate for employers with 100 or more employees has already been temporarily halted by a federal court.
Further, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has agreed to not enforce the mandate after the court stopped the mandate.
He also noted that federal contractors subject to the vaccine mandate – now being challenged in court, too – will have to decide whether to require employees to be vaccinated or relinquish lucrative federal contracts that will lead to layoffs.
Carmichael said the legislation gives Kansas residents a false sense of security about whether they will need to be vaccinated.
“In other words, we lie to our constituents,” he said.
“We make ourselves feel good. We have the fodder for campaign postcards that say, ‘I stood up against the federal government, I stood for individual rights, I stood up against vaccines.’ But our constituents are out of work.”
Republican state Rep. Stephen Owens, the lead sponsor of the bill, couched the issue another way.
“Can you imagine the threat of losing your job right before Christmas?” the Hesston lawmaker said.
“That’s what many of our constituents are facing with this out of control federal government trying to force this upon them and upon each one of us,” he said.
“We can agree to disagree on many things,” he said. “Many of us want to go further. Some of us don’t even want to be here.
“What I am here to tell is you is our employers and employees and our constituents and friends and our families need the direction that this legislation can provide for everyone,” Owens said.
Republican state Rep. Michael Houser, who acknowledged not being vaccinated, encouraged House members to resist the federal government.
He promised that he would start by bringing a “wheelbarrow full of Second Amendment bills” for the Legislature to consider and get behind next year.
“Right now it’s 100 employees, well the next things if we don’t push back on this, it’s going to be 50 employees have to get vaccinated, then it’s going to be 25, then’s going to be everybody has to be vaccinated.
“What’s next? Are they going to start loading unvaccinated into cattle cars and keeping us segregated?
“We’ve got to start pushing back now, and I mean it. Get behind me. Or next year we’re going to do some business.”
