Employer vaccine ban marks Idaho GOP’s embrace of big government for culture war
A vote this week provided further evidence that the Idaho Republican Party of old is waning.
House Bill 581 would make it a misdemeanor for any business operating in Idaho to either require its workers to be vaccinated or to require them to disclose their vaccination status. It passed the House, 39-29, on Tuesday, with 17 Republicans joining the 12 Democrats in opposition.
The move is yet another signpost along the Idaho GOP’s trail away from old-school conservative philosophy — core precepts of which are free markets and freedom of contract — into conservative identity politics. More and more, the party of small government aims to expand government power, to use a stronger government to enforce a conservative cultural landscape.
Many Republican lawmakers voted for this bill even though it ran against their districts’ clear economic interests.
The bill contains no carve-out for federal contractors, which would create a double bind for employers like Idaho National Laboratory in the likely eventuality that the federal contractor mandate resumes. The lab would face a federal mandate to require vaccination on the one hand and misdemeanor penalties for complying with that mandate at the state level.
Nonetheless, many lawmakers from areas with significant INL employment — including Rep. Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls; Rep. Marco Erickson, R-Idaho Falls; Rep. Chad Christensen, R-Iona; and Rep. Barbara Ehardt, R-Idaho Falls — supported the bill.
The battle the Idaho GOP seems increasingly interested in is not an economic one but a cultural one.
- Angry a local store decided not to accept cash? Use the government to mandate that stores accept cash.
- Angry about the NCAA’s rules regarding sex divisions in sports? Write the rules of sports competition into state code.
- Farmers market won’t let you carry a gun while shopping? Make that illegal.
- Angry your employer wants you to get vaccinated to protect the office from outbreaks? Make that a crime.
If the bill moves through the Senate, it will put some of the most vulnerable Idahoans in a terrible bind.
A wide variety of studies have shown that a vaccinated person is less likely to pass on COVID than an unvaccinated one, and that if both the infected person and their contact are vaccinated, the risk is further reduced. A large study published in January found that having two doses of the Pfizer vaccine resulted in between a 61% and a 35% reduction in the likelihood of passing on the delta variant, for example.
If you are an immunocompromised person who needs a home care worker, this may be hugely important.
Shouldn’t you be allowed to make an informed decision about which of two candidates to employ, given that one may be about twice as likely as the other to pass on a potentially fatal disease? Isn’t that an important part of personal freedom?
Not in the world of the ascendant faction of the GOP. In their world, that’s a misdemeanor.