LANSING, Mich. – Michigan lawmakers are considering new legislation that would prohibit discrimination based on vaccination status, including adding vaccine status protections to the state’s civil rights act.
Republican State Rep. James DeSana is sponsoring a package of bills that would prohibit discrimination based on vaccination status and prevent blanket vaccine mandates by state and local governments, employers, and public institutions, including schools and colleges.
The bills allow for limited exemptions where vaccine requirements may be necessary, including for healthcare and daycare workers.
“This would just bring Michigan up into the group of states that are now declaring that people who want to choose not to get vaccinated should have that right universal throughout society,” DeSana said.
Wayne State University infectious diseases professor Dr. Teena Chopra frames getting vaccinated as a public responsibility. “These bills threaten public health, and I also think that they put vulnerable individuals at risk,” she said.
DeSana’s proposals come as the vaccine choice movement grows across the country, now with the support of the nation’s top health official, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“We’re trying to decipher a path here that educates people but also puts some balance back into this so that we never have a situation again where people are being threatened if they don’t disclose their vaccine status, or where people are fearful of someone finding out that they’re unvaccinated,” DeSana explained.
Dr. Chopra, who is also the director of the Center for Emerging and Infectious Diseases at Wayne State, said the vaccine choice movement is making the work of public health officials more challenging.
“It’s very scary because it has taken years and years of work to establish vaccine policies, and they stand on evidence,” she said.
Dr. Chopra later added, “When we weaken our mandates, it can lead to outbreaks. It can lead to increased hospitalizations.”
All three bills are currently in committee in the State House.
Here are the bills: