Partisan divide on COVID policy widens in state legislatures

One week into their session, lawmakers already have filed nearly three dozen bills banning, discouraging or providing exemptions from vaccination requirements.The differing approaches highlight a persistent partisan gap in pandemic policy as states begin a third year of legislative sessions amid a virus outbreak that many had assumed would be waning but is instead surging to near peak levels of hospitalizations because of the omicron variant.As lawmakers in some Democratic-led states meet remotely because of renewed COVID-19 concerns, their counterparts in many Republican-led legislatures are beginning their 2022 sessions on a quest to outlaw vaccine mandates and roll back pandemic precautions.“We have in effect pulled into two different camps with two different views of reality,” said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, who described the “intellectual schism” as “very disturbing.”“In many ways, the data around vaccines, masks and all these things is kind of bearing out as a proxy for the role of government,” Benjamin said.The political divisions that began over government-ordered shutdowns, social distancing and mask mandates in the early stages of the pandemic have progressed as governments have shifted to vaccinations as a primary means of a combating a virus that has killed more than 835,000 in the U.S.Republican legislation opposing vaccine mandates has been spurred largely by rules from President Joe Biden's administration requiring COVID-19 vaccinations or regular testing for large and medium-sized employers, health care providers and federal contractors. After passing legislation last November making it easier for employees to refuse to comply with vaccine mandates, some conservative Republicans in the Kansas Legislature now want to go further and prohibit employers from imposing such mandates.Vaccine legislation has sparked internal divisions in some Republican-led states.Legislation on a fast-track in the Indiana House would sharply limit COVID-19 vaccination requirements in workplaces, though Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb and GOP Senate leaders have opposed the bill as wrongly interfering with private business decisions.