Missouri House passes two bills blocking COVID-19 vaccine mandates

BY DANIELLE DUCLOS

Missouri News Network

JEFFERSON CITY — Missouri is one step closer to thwarting COVID-19 vaccine mandates after the House passed two bills Tuesday afternoon that would prevent vaccine requirements as a condition of employment for publicly funded institutions and for organ transplant recipients.

HB 1686, introduced by Bill Hardwick, R-Waynesville, prevents any state agency or department, public school, or otherwise publicly funded body from requiring COVID-19 vaccines as a condition of employment. It also bars public employers from issuing penalties to their employees based on their vaccination status.

Under the bill, public employees would be exempt from other medical treatment mandated by their employers, such as chickenpox or measles vaccines, if they have a medical or religious exemption. They would also be granted protection against retaliation for having an exemption. The bill passed the House 110-41.

Many Republicans spoke in support of the bill as well as a Democrat: Rep. Mark Ellebracht.

“It just stands for people to be able to tell their boss, ‘You cannot tell me what to do with my body,’” Ellebracht, D-Liberty, said. “And that’s a principle that I think pretty much everybody in Missouri agrees to.”

The second bill, which was a combined version of HB 2358 and HB 1485, was introduced by David Evans, R-West Plains.

This bill would block any medical provider from considering a patient’s COVID-19 vaccination status in their determination of whether that patient is eligible to receive an organ transplant.

While the bill passed 105-46, there was strong opposition from Rep. Keri Ingle, D-Lee’s Summit, who raised concerns about the health of transplant patients if they weren’t vaccinated against COVID-19.

“If we care about being pro-life in this state, if we care about the transplant community, if we care and we trust enough about what doctors say, … we believe in their ability and their knowledge and the science to remove an organ from one person’s body, put in another one and reattach it,” she said. “We trust that medical science. But when it comes to … what happens before that transplant takes place, we say, ‘No, this legislature knows better than you guys do.’”

Attached to the bill was an emergency clause that would have allowed the law to take immediate effect upon passage; however, the clause failed 105-48.

Aside from preventing vaccine requirements for transplant patients, HB 2358 also tackles vaccine mandates for private employers.

The bill requires a private employer to allow exemptions from a COVID-19 vaccine mandate if the employee requests one based on certain “sincerely held beliefs” such as religion. It also safeguards employees from missing out on unemployment benefits if they are fired for failing to cooperate with an employer’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement.

The bill additionally specifies that courts cannot deny or limit a non-custodial parent’s visitation of their child because of the parent’s COVID-19 vaccination status.