U.S. Employers Unlikely to Mandate COVID-19 Vaccine

Since early spring when the coronavirus pandemic began, pharmaceutical companies worldwide have been conducting laboratory tests to create a COVID-19 vaccine. Last month, Pfizer and BioNTech announced their vaccine is more than 90% effective. Then, a few days later Moderna Inc. announced theirs was 94.5% effective. Pfizer then launched a delivery trial in four U.S. states.

This month, all 50 U.S. states and territories are expected to receive vaccines from one of these companies. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted December 9 to recommend the agency grant emergency use authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, which will be rolled out as early as today. Advisers will meet December 17 to review Moderna’s application.

But the question on many people’s minds is whether U.S. employers will mandate employees to receive the vaccine. According to health law experts, that is unlikely due to legal repercussions and cultural backlash, Reuters reports.

U.S. federal agencies have not weighed on COVID-19 vaccine mandates. However, officials with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) have previously said employers have the right to mandate vaccinations, according to Reuters.

“Companies could theoretically issue a mandate, but in the current political climate it is very unlikely they will do so,” said Peter Meyers, a law professor at George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C. “Americans tend to shy away from mandates.”

Other experts say there are two grounds for objecting vaccines: medical conditions that contraindicate vaccination, and religious or personal beliefs. Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, a law professor at University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, said that employees could reject vaccination on religious grounds and the employer must accommodate the workers. In addition, some union contracts prevent mandatory vaccinations.