TOPEKA, Kan. — The Kansas Senate passed a bill Monday banning businesses from mandating that workers get vaccinated against COVID-19 without the Legislature’s permission, an aggressive move in a special session called to fight federal vaccine rules supported by President Joe Biden.
The Senate approved the measure, 25 to 13, after the House passed a narrower proposal that allows employers to mandate vaccinations but provides a sweeping religious exemption. The two bills amounted to opening bids over how far lawmakers will go in their fight against COVID-19 vaccine regulations.
The House and Senate appeared on track to begin negotiations on Monday evening aimed at reaching a compromise lawmakers can send to Gov. Laura Kelly.
“There are people that do not want to take this vaccine, even at the expense of their own lives. So we’re here defending that liberty,” said Sen. Dennis Pyle, a Hiawatha Republican. “That liberty that says, ‘no you as my employer are not my king, you are not my god.’”
The bill passed largely along party lines. Leavenworth Sen. Jeff Pittman and Wichita Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau were the only Democrats who supported it.
The measure originally allowed employers to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations and offered unemployment benefits to workers fired for refusing. It provided a wide-ranging religious exemption that allowed workers to cite “non-theistic” beliefs and barred employers from investigating whether workers sincerely held those beliefs.
The Senate tacked the mandate ban onto the bill after Pyle proposed it as an amendment late in the debate, creating a clunky piece of legislation. It would simultaneously ban COVID-19 vaccine mandates unless the Legislature authorizes them while extending benefits to workers fired for refusing to comply with mandates that would likely be illegal under the bill.
“I am just concerned that this bill itself is so mangled constitutionally that not only will the supposed provisions that expand the religious exemption be ruled unconstitutional, I think it’s going to drag the whole (unemployment) language down with it as well, too,” said Sen. Tom Holland, a Baldwin City Democrat.
Even according to its supporters, the expansive ban on employer mandates is unlikely to pass the Legislature this week. Legislators are keen to quickly wrap up the session, which began Monday, and rank-and-file lawmakers had been assured their work would be kept narrowly-focused.
Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican, said the provision likely won’t survive a conference committee — the formal legislative negotiations between the House and Senate. Still, he found value in taking the vote.
“What I did find encouraging about that is getting a gauge on where the Senate’s at when it comes to just the mandates in general,” Masterson told reporters, a hint that the topic will return during the regular session next year even if the ban doesn’t pass this week.
House Speaker Ron Ryckman, a Republican, said he would look at the Senate’s measure when the bill enters conference committee but appeared skeptical.
“This whole thing has been about federal mandates and what the federal government did so I don’t see that fitting into special session,” Ryckman said.
The House will also need to decide whether to support the Senate bill’s provision offering unemployment insurance to workers who are denied exemptions and fired by their employer. The issue is a sticking point for many House Republicans, who express concern it could overburden an already beleaguered state Department of Labor, which administers the unemployment program.
Earlier Monday, the House passed its own bill, 78 to 40, that, instead of offering unemployment benefits, requires state officials to investigate any alleged firings over non-compliance with mandates and authorizes the Attorney General’s office to fine employers who violate the law.
Monday evening the House voted against accepting the Senate’s proposal, a move that will trigger a conference committee.
Rep. Fred Patton, a Topeka Republican, said he would struggle to support a bill that included the unemployment benefits. “I think we want people to be working and that’s why we passed the exemptions,” Patton said.
One of two physicians in the House, Atchison Republican Rep. John Eplee said the measure gave him pause from a medical standpoint.
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