FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(Jackson, MS): The Mississippi Justice Institute – a non-profit Constitutional litigation center and the legal arm of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy – filed suit today to challenge the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for private employers.

The mandate, issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), requires private companies with more than 100 employees to ensure that all of their workers are either fully vaccinated by January 4th, 2022, or subject to weekly testing and mask-wearing. OSHA says "fully vaccinated" means that the employee has received two doses of Moderna or Pfizer's vaccine, or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson's vaccine. The companies are subject to fines well over $13,000 per day for each employee that does not comply.

The Mississippi Justice Institute (MJI) represents Gulf Coast Restaurant Group, a corporate family of restaurants including Half Shell Oyster House and the Rackhouse. Attorney General Lynn Fitch represents the State of Mississippi in the suit. The lawsuit was filed by a coalition of states, including Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Utah, as well as private employers in several of those states.

“The Mississippi Justice Institute is proud to represent Gulf Coast Restaurant Group, and to partner with Attorney General Lynn Fitch to challenge this extraordinary federal overreach,” said MJI Director, Aaron Rice. “While we and our client are grateful for the development of the COVID vaccines, we cannot stand by while the federal government brazenly exceeds its constitutional authority and infringes on the individual liberties of Mississippi businesses and workers.”

"While I am personally pro-vaccination, I completely disagree with this policy,” said Kevin Fish, Vice President of Gulf Coast Restaurant Group. “It is completely arbitrary. This policy will place an unfair and unreasonable burden upon my staff simply because of the number of employees I have."

In addition to turning employers into federal vaccine enforcers, the regulation will also result in many leaving the workforce entirely. This would accelerate a trend that has devastated the nation’s economic growth in the wake of pandemic.

"The federal government has no business forcing Mississippi workers to get vaccinated or forcing Mississippi businesses to fire their employees,” said Rice. “This is still a free country. In America, we have presidents, not kings."

The lawsuit was filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Please direct all media inquiries to to Stone Clanton, [email protected]

A recent proposal from the Biden administration has called for the Internal Revenue Service to have more direct access to the bank accounts of Americans. Many of the leaders on both sides of the aisle in Washington have advocated for data privacy. Yet, this proposal has a hidden technological danger as it threatens the data privacy and protection of Americans’ bank accounts.

In the backlash against the proposal that certain American bank account information be reported directly to the IRS, much of the opposition to the proposal has centered around the danger of federal agents utilizing bank data to put Americans under financial surveillance. All of these concerns are well-grounded and legitimate. However, it is important to also consider that having sensitive bank account data centralized under one government agency carries an enormous cybersecurity risk.

Despite the claims that the proposed concept would help curb tax fraud, there has been no widely circulated data on how much it would cost the IRS to protect the data adequately. Worse yet, no analysis has been conducted on the enormous financial damage that taxpayers could face in the event of a catastrophic data breach.

The IRS has been a target of hackers for decades. However, a new influx of data in this level provides many more entry points and for hackers and a greater incentive for hacking operations to occur. There are multiple angles to consider this from.

Centralized bank account data would be a high-value target for hackers

In the first place, the IRS possessing a centralized repository of American bank account data would invite hackers' operations. Even though the proposal has not yet fully specified the exact type of bank account data that would be included, there would still be a danger. The advocates for this policy have insisted that the bank account data being gathered would be fairly limited. Yet, even the smallest amount of bank account information can be leveraged by hackers.

For instance, a hacker might get something as basic as a list of bank account numbers, the total amount of annual funds for each account, and the email addresses associated with the accounts. Then, the hacker could use this information to go after specific targets such as high-value bank account owners, retirees and elderly, and other particular victims with spear-phishing campaigns, spoofing, and additional attack methods.

These hackers could come from two primary sectors, foreign government-sponsored attacks, and criminal cybergangs. Although these entities utilize stolen data for different purposes, the danger is the same.

Government-sponsored attacks to get bank account information would carry several incentives for foreign governments. Foreign intelligence agencies can use hacking as a data harvesting method and then use that broad information to hone in on specific individuals. In the context of bank account data, simply having a confirmation of which business, political, and military leaders own specific bank accounts could serve as a precursor to initiate hacking operations against the bank itself in order to get more detailed information on specific individuals. In addition to intelligence, government-sponsored hackers could also potentially use this information in attempts to steal from the bank accounts themselves.

Non-government cybergangs would also have many uses for a centralized repository of IRS bank account data. While foreign government hackers often have a focus on gathering data for intelligence purposes, organized cybercrime primarily focuses on financial incentives. If they got access to this IRS bank account data, hackers could use this to single out potential victims with high-value accounts. Furthermore, by knowing where potential victims have bank accounts, hackers can use additional methods, such as installing fake banking apps made to look like the victim’s home bank.

Government agencies have a history of data breaches

Even if an organization has a perfect track record of cybersecurity with no major incidents, there is still always the possibility that a breach will occur. Yet, the federal government does not even remotely have such a track record. It is also notable that while different agencies have fared differently, the IRS has become especially notorious for a track of record filled with data breaches and compromises.

 According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, in 2016 the IRS encountered $12.2 billion in attempted identity theft tax fraud and paid out at least 1.6 billion in fraudulent refunds. This is a 13 percent fail rate. The report also found that the IRS had not followed best practices for cybersecurity. If the IRS cannot even always determine that they are issuing a refund to the right person, there is little reason to think that bank account data would be protected from fraudsters.

Yet, it is also important to recognize that the IRS is not in a siloed cyber-ecosystem with data sharing that is exempt from the generalized attacks that have targeted multiple agencies across the federal government. Current federal law explicitly permits the IRS to share data with federal, state, and local agencies for a variety of purposes, and it has been doing so for years. In effect, this means that no matter how strict the IRS cybersecurity standards were, there would always be a possibility that another government agency could have a data breach, and jeopardize the shared IRS bank account data.

For instance, in the recent and massive SolarWinds hack, the federal government saw data compromises across numerous agencies and departments. These entities included the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Department of the Treasury, the National Finance Center, and several others. Thus, even though the IRS claims that it was not affected by the SolarWinds hack, this does not mean that taxpayer data in possession of these other agencies remained secure.

The potential for third-party backdoors

The GAO report also determined that one of the primary security flaws in the system was the policies of the IRS that permitted third-party software to submit and extract data with a lack of adequate cyber oversight. Specifically, the report found that much of the third-party tax preparation software had critical flaws that could lead to data compromises.

If the IRS required banks to report their account data, additional third-party software would likely be introduced into the IRS technology ecosystem in order to deal with the sheer volume of bank data. If the IRS had multiple third-party data reporters approved for integration with its system, each reporting software would stand as potential security fail point. 

The broader effects of this would be twofold. On the one hand, if the IRS was too lax in its security compliance requirements, there would be a higher likelihood of taxpayer bank account data breaches. On the other hand, if the IRS implements extremely stringent cybersecurity compliance mandates, there could be an increased cost to the banks themselves and the third-party data reporting software developers.

Government financial monitoring of citizens has principle issues and technical dangers

It goes against the most basic American principles of limited government and due process for the IRS to presumptively monitor the bank accounts of citizens. Given that the entire policy proposal is based upon a faulty foundation, it comes as little surprise that the proposal carries extreme technological and security risks as well. Americans should be able to have confidence that their private bank account information will not be centralized in the hands of a government agency with a history of leaking data.

Since the advent of Covid-19, the subject has all but dominated the public discourse and debate. In the wake of such discussions, different opinions abound as individuals respond to new information and interact with old information. There have been true claims, false claims, and everything in between.

In the name of combating misinformation, the Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure recently issued a new policy that vaguely prohibits medical misinformation from being spread by doctors, particularly on social media. There are several unanswered questions surrounding the policy that are unclear in the wording of the policy.

Under Section 73-25-29 of the Mississippi Code and other sections of the law, the different types of unprofessional misconduct that are grounds for disciplinary action against a physician are specified in fairly clear language. Such grounds could include narcotics violations, falsifying documents, conviction of a felony, and other clearly defined violations. While the Board is given a broad degree of discretion, the state Code is fairly specific.

Contrasting with this specific language is the vague use of misinformation as grounds for discipline, which becomes especially complex when the dynamic of social media is named in the written policy. The new policy states that physicians "must share information that is factual, scientifically grounded and consensus-driven." Furthermore, the policy states that "physicians who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation are risking disciplinary action." This language is unclear, especially in the social media world of "Likes," "Shares," and "Retweets."

For instance, a physician might reshare, or even write, a Facebook or Twitter post containing content that would be deemed as misinformation by the consensus. However, the post might also have some helpful information that would not be deemed misinformation by the consensus. Could the physician be disciplined?

While some would have us believe that social media posts and general public discourse can be separated into nice, neat categories of "Accurate Information" and "Misinformation," it is not even remotely that simple. Rather, in a world of imperfect people, much of the content of social media and elsewhere is partially accurate and partially inaccurate, but free-thinking adults generally have the ability to discern between the two. Furthermore, even a casual review of the public discourse since the advent of Covid, would reveal that even the consensus itself has changed multiple times.

For instance, many will remember when the proposition that Covid leaked from a Chinese lab was officially labeled by many as "misinformation" and a wild conspiracy theory, leading Facebook itself to ban such content. But in a matter of months, investigations and Congressional testimonies suggested that this was a very real possibility. Facebook lifted the ban, follow-up investigations were initiated, and those who had been silenced were no longer labeled as distributors of misinformation.

If the medical Board had an officially written disinformation policy based on consensus, and it had actually disciplined a physician for spreading the lab leak theory, would it have had to walk back on its actions? Worse, would the Board give restitution to the physician for the financial losses incurred by the wrongly imposed discipline?

Covid is a relatively new virus, and the consensus has changed as new information is being discovered. It is not at all far-fetched to suggest that this will happen again, and some who are currently outside the consensus will be shown to be correct as new information is brought to light.

All of these questions and complexities are important factors to consider. Some may claim that defining misinformation could be accomplished on a case-by-case basis during disciplinary hearings. But the vagueness of the language should not mean that physicians have to face a disciplinary hearing before they even have a full clarification on whether or not the Board’s misinformation policy was violated.

Rather than issuing policies that leave so many unanswered questions, policies should be clear on what constitutes misconduct that would lead to discipline. These are challenging times, and no one has all of the answers. Public discourse should be permitted to have the input of multiple viewpoints, especially when no final consensus has even been established. Rather than leaving physicians with little clarity for their social media use by employing vague misinformation rules, public policy should be clear so that all parties have the foundation of a clear rule of law.  

There is only one moment that has been forever seared into the collective memory of living Americans: the horrific terrorist attacks on our homeland twenty years ago on September 11, 2001.

We all know exactly where we were that day. We remember the feelings of confusion as the initial reports came in. The horror of watching fellow Americans jump to their deaths and the towers collapse. The anger at realizing that we were watching an intentional attack. The fear of what would come next. The acts of heroism we witnessed. The unity that followed. The resolve to prevail. The vows to never forget.

If we had known on September 11th that America would not suffer another terrorist attack during the next twenty years, we would have been relieved and even overjoyed. It’s easy to forget that now. Sometime during the past ten or fifteen years, the fear of another major terrorist attack receded. It wasn’t something that average Americans worried about at all. But twenty years ago, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the single biggest fear gripping America was the fear of another large-scale terrorist attack.

We saw daily warnings and color-coded terrorist threat advisories on our televisions. We worried about how easy it would be for a lone terrorist to detonate a dirty bomb in a crowded metropolitan area. We worried that attacks on our infrastructure could cripple us. We worried about becoming the next victim of terrorism anytime we boarded planes, trains, or even buses. We worried that every crowded sporting event might become a massacre.

For the past two decades, none of that has come to pass. Instead, thousands of our brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters fought the enemy overseas and prevented the fight from coming here. While most Americans returned to their normal lives after the shock of 9/11 wore off, our veterans paid the cost for that normalcy for the next two decades. Nearly 2,500 American veterans were killed in Afghanistan. Hundreds more were injured, and countless others still carry the hidden wounds of war.

Unlike many of America’s past wars, the war in Afghanistan was not supported by a military draft. The soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who fought in Afghanistan were part of an all-volunteer force. Many of those veterans dropped their life plans and enlisted in the military after 9/11 specifically so they could join the fight to defend our nation, our values, and our way of life. They did this even though nobody asked them to and despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of their colleagues and peers did not.

Americans are blessed to have a unique generation of volunteer veterans in our families, communities, and workplaces. As we mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and take stock of the past two decades, we should be sure to honor their sacrifices.   

Aaron Rice is an Iraq War veteran and a Purple Heart recipient. He is also the director of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a nonprofit, constitutional litigation center and the legal arm of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.

Facts don’t have to answer to anyone. But is this true in our day when Big Tech social media is the established forum of public discourse? If one were to use the Big Tech content labels and fact checks as the ultimate arbitrators of truth in the public square, the facts would change almost daily. Unfortunately for Big Tech, facts don’t answer to anyone, not even the experts.

At the beginning of 2020, the news of a strange, new, deadly virus that originated in Wuhan, China went out like shockwaves across the globe. Almost immediately, the social media scene became abuzz with millions of voices reacting to the news of a virus that would threaten their health, jobs, futures, and very lives.

As reports began to flow out of China that the virus had possibly originated through a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, social media began circulating this possibility. But before the public discourse got too carried away with a free discussion of the virus origins, social media fact-checkers decreed in early 2020 that such conversations contributed to misinformation and banned any user that purported such a view. The experts had spoken, and those who dissented would be silenced.

After summarily declaring that the Wuhan lab leak theory was so untrue that it could not even be spoken of, Big Tech platforms such as Facebook, had a policy change several months later. The experts had spoken again. This time they determined that now the lowly rank-and-file Americans should be permitted to discuss the lab leak theory that it would have been dangerous for them to discuss only months before.

Granted, these are private sector companies that enact social media censorship. But the massive size, liability protections, and political connectedness of Big Tech call into the question whether or not Big Tech companies have control over public discourse that has grown beyond the proper extent of the private sector. Indeed, many of these private sector moderators have a power over public discourse that sometimes carries a greater sway than even the government itself.

However, such power in Big Tech hasn’t kept the influence of big government out of content moderation. For instance, in the case of the Covid lab leak theory, social media executives communicated directly with government bureaucrats to determine what content to remove. Such actions turned the content moderators into the government’s proxy henchman. As if this were not enough, some have advocated for Big Tech to be formally and legally directed to take down posts that the government considers misinformation.

Is this censorship at the bidding of “the experts” truly the type of public discourse that America can thrive in? We live in a day in which there is widespread civil disagreement on issues ranging from immigration to Covid, and from critical race theory to gun control. Just about every party has the same facts to work with, but many come to differing conclusions. Yet, for practically every issue, there is an “expert” who attempts to establish the acceptable narrative.

America has a long heritage of open discussion and debate of facts under the microscope of the public square. While censorship and the tyranny of the experts might be the status quo in some societies, there are few things more dangerous to a free-thinking society. Those at the top must not control the state of public dialogue.

Facts and ideas are the currency of civil discourse. The powers that be should not leverage their clout to suppress the open and robust discussion of the facts. This is America. Every thinking person should be permitted to civilly discuss and review the facts before them. Such an environment is critical for free-thinking citizens to draw their own conclusions about the pressing questions that confront our nation -without Big Tech censorship and the tyranny of the experts.

As the nation gradually exits COVID and heads back into regular operations, the climate is ripe with opportunity to consider questions regarding the merits of regulatory freedom. Throughout the country, states have taken different stances on how to best approach the pandemic.

Some, such as New York and California, instituted a strong lockdown policy that vastly expanded government control over social and economic activities, while others, such as Florida and South Dakota, took a more hands-off approach, ensuring that the principle of individual autonomy drove good social and economic policy. These differing approaches offer a unique opportunity to evaluate whether the government is necessary to solve all of society's problems. History, free-market principles, and experience would certainly say that it is not.

For example, Brad Polumbo of the Foundation for Economic Education asserts the data is overwhelmingly in favor of free states over those states that locked down completely. For one, studies by The Lancet in July of 2020 and the Frontiers for Health in November of 2020 demonstrated that the stringency of COVID regulations showed no correlation with the numbers of COVID deaths within those states that promoted lockdowns. 

Instead, studies indicated that the stringency of COVID regulations led to great economic cost as businesses took significant financial hits. Social consequences have included an increase in suicides, domestic violence, and drug overdoses.

Meanwhile, when comparing lockdown states to those that took a more relaxed approach, the result is quite telling. In terms of unemployment, those states that have prioritized lockdowns have taken longer to return to normal than those that took a more relaxed position. On top of that, most states that took the hands-off approach are much better positioned with unemployment (about 3 percent) than those that took a strict lockdown approach.

On a practical level, the pandemic offered the opportunity to really put various philosophical and economic principles to the test. As the pandemic comes to a close, it is evident that mistakes were made. Not adhering to principles of economic and social freedom may have been one of those mistakes.  When making this kind of evaluation, hindsight is, of course, always going to be 20/20. However, the data demonstrates that moving forward, the best policy is that which adheres to limited government and prioritizes individual autonomy.

The Covid experience has only further demonstrated that there is no reason, pandemic or otherwise, that justifies government shutting down people’s lives and taking away their freedoms. As Mississippi and the nation at large return back to normal, it is critical that the protection of individual freedom and establishment of limited government ought to be the priority.

Protesters around the world seem to know what too many Americans have forgotten: that the American flag is the greatest symbol of independence and liberty that has ever been known. 

That is exactly why a number of Cubans continue to wave and march with American flags in their hands as they protest the failing communist regime on the island.

Thousands of protesters in over 40 cities have now taken to the streets in Cuba to declare their desire for freedom and voice their frustrations with their communist authoritarian government. This is no small thing. Never before have we seen in Cuba protests of this scale.

These are people who know the potential cost of their actions. Their public opposition to the regime could mean their death. Already, over 100 people have gone missing. Dozens have been arrested. Protesters have been beaten by security forces. Cuba’s president has labeled protesters “counter-revolutionaries” and has called for force against them.

For over 60 years, dictators have run Cuba, oppressing the people and stifling growth and prosperity. While the people starve, party elites have sucked up power and wealth. While housing crumbles, new hotels and resorts are built to bring money to the government. While the communists declare liberation, they silence and crush the freedoms of the people.

In order to stifle the protests and the transmission of videos highlighting government violence, the Cuban government shut down internet on the island. This was a blatant attempt to block communications amongst the grassroots organizers of this tremendous display of opposition.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis even called on Florida-based companies to attempt to provide internet access to the people of Cuba during this time. He noted in a press conference that communist regime leaders “don’t want the truth to be out, they don’t want people to be able to communicate.”

Just 90 miles away from American shores, many of the Cuban people look to our nation for hope. Thousands of Americans themselves have experienced the horrors of the Cuban regime or have relatives that are still there, which makes this moment all the more important.

Every American should seek to support the Cuban people and denounce the communist government. After 60 years, a nation stands stuck in the past, clinging to a broken economic and political system that has left far too many in poverty. Our political leaders should be held to account and we ought to demand the utmost clarity in their condemnations of the Cuban regime.

The failures of the Cuban government are a stark reminder to those who call for socialism and communism to be implemented in the United States. Those political ideologies have failed in both a spectacular and consistent manner. They have failed systematically across cultures and continents. The loud cries of the Cuban people should be a chilling wake-up call to all those who advocate for or tolerate these vicious ideologies in Mississippi and the rest of the United States.

On March 3, 2020, New York’s legislature authorized Governor Cuomo to unilaterally suspend any law or issue any directive that was necessary to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. Importantly, that authorization expired a year later, on April 30, 2021. Law-abiding gun owners in New York should probably be thankful for that expiration clause, since Governor Cuomo has since become the first Governor in the nation to declare a “gun violence disaster emergency” in the state on July 6, 2021.

Because the broad COVID-19 emergency authorization has expired, Governor Cuomo is relying instead on a more limited state law that allows him to temporarily suspend other laws, if doing so would help him address a disaster declared by the state. Importantly, this authority comes with more limits than the COVID-19 authorization. While the Governor may temporarily suspend laws, he may not issue directives. Additionally, the suspension of any laws must be more targeted to safeguard the health and welfare of the public, and impose less of a deviation from existing law than was required under the COVID-19 authorization.

Perhaps these limitations are why Governor Cuomo’s executive order does not impose any new restrictions on gun owners in the state. Rather, the executive order suspends certain restrictions in the state’s finance laws in order to allow the Governor to direct money towards community efforts to reduce gun violence, and to enter into contracts and other written agreements meant to address gun violence.

Funding freed up under the executive order will be used to fund a variety of efforts. These efforts include community activity and summer jobs programs for at-risk youths, programs to track and provide resources to emerging gun violence hot spots, and a new state police unit to stop guns coming in from other states that are illegal under New York law. There are also initiatives meant to strengthen relationships between police and the communities they serve.

While Governor Cuomo is clearly proud of the boldness of his executive order, which he described as “the first-in-the-nation gun violence disaster emergency," it does not come anywhere close to the brazen willingness to flout clearly established law that was exhibited by a gun-related executive order issued by Jackson Mayor Lumumba on April 25, 2020.

Mayor Lumumba’s order purported to “suspend” the right to openly carry a firearm in the City of Jackson, despite the fact that the Mississippi Constitution explicitly protects the right to open carry, and declares that the right to openly carry cannot even be regulated in our state. While the executive order invoked the COVID-19 pandemic as its justification, it did not claim that the order would reduce the transmission of COVID-19 or that gun violence that had occurred during the pandemic was caused by people exercising their right to openly carry firearms.

MCPP’s legal arm, the Mississippi Justice Institute, filed a lawsuit against Mayor Lumumba two days after he issued the executive order. The lawsuit argued that Mayor Lumumba’s order violated the Mississippi Constitution, the U.S. Constitution, and various state laws. Six weeks later, a federal court entered an order which permanently banned the City of Jackson or any of its officials from ever again issuing an order restricting the right to openly carry firearms, and provided for contempt of court proceedings against any city officials who violate the court order.

Regardless of the differences between the executive orders in New York and Jackson, one thing is clear: our executive branch officials need to stop governing by emergency. Routine public policy issues should not be decided unilaterally by dressing them up as “emergencies.” Whether emergency powers are invoked to build a border wall that Congress will not fund, or to ban guns in a state committed to gun rights, those actions erode the Rule of Law and eliminate the normal give and take that is supposed to occur in a democratic republic made up of a diverse people with many different priorities, beliefs, and values.

Even if those lofty ideals were not enough, practical concerns should dictate the same response. If we cheer on government officials who exceed their legitimate power to pursue our preferred policy outcomes, we have no recourse when other officials similarly abuse their powers for ends we disapprove of. The only way to prevent such abuses is to limit government power, no matter who is currently in charge.

Some claim that we are too polarized to govern effectively using our normal democratic processes, but our country has been through worse. We experienced deep divisions during the eras of the Founding, Reconstruction, McCarthyism, Civil Rights, and the Vietnam War, just to name a few. That we are experiencing deep divisions again today is no reason to throw away our precious inheritance of constitutionally limited government.

With new COVID cases remaining persistently low and multiple vaccines available to all adults, Mississippi appears to have fully returned to “normal.” 

Employers navigating this return have adopted a wide range of policies, from requiring masks for non-vaccinated employees to requiring most employees to get vaccinated. Are these policies legal?

Yes, with very few exceptions.  

First, remember that Mississippi is an “at will” employment state. That means an employee can quit his or her job for any reason or no reason at all.  Likewise, an employer can fire an employee for any reason (as long as it would not violate discrimination laws covering protected classes) or no reason at all. 

This means that employers have a very wide scope in setting the rules that employees must follow. After all, it’s their business. And if an employee doesn’t like the employer’s policies (like a mask or vaccine policy), they can quit the job if they so choose. 

Some employees mistakenly believe that the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) prevents their employer from asking about their vaccine status. HIPAA prevents certain covered entities which have sensitive patient health information from sharing it with others without the patient’s consent. It does not prevent employers – or anyone else for that matter – from asking anyone about their health information.  

Some of this confusion may stem from the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which prevents employers from asking job candidates if they have a disability before making a job offer and requires employers to maintain the confidentiality of any employee medical information obtained after hiring. But nothing in the ADA prevents an employer from asking employees about their vaccine status during a pandemic or requiring vaccinations for employees.

The ADA does require employers to make reasonable accommodations for employees who cannot get vaccinated due to a disability or sincerely held religious belief. However, such an accommodation is not required if it would pose an undue hardship on the operation of the employer’s business.  

Another source of confusion seems to be a section of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act which prevents the government from mandating vaccines that have only received an emergency use authorization from the FDA. But that law does not prevent private employers from requiring their employees to receive such vaccines as a condition of employment.  

The best advice for employees is to ignore any claims they see on social media regarding their employer’s rights or responsibilities. If an employer adopts policies that concern you, talk to them about your concerns. If a compromise cannot be reached, and if the issue is important enough to you, then it’s ultimately up to you to decide if you want to continue your employment relationship.  It’s a free country after all.