How Businesses in Texas and Florida Wrestle With States’ Vaccine Backlash
The New York Times
With the Biden administration’s attempt to impose a national standard blocked, companies must navigate a thicket of local rules as they try to return employees to the workplace.
The Biden administration’s attempt to impose a sweeping vaccine rule for private employers last year was met with a wave of state laws limiting company vaccine mandates. Texas and Florida were on the vanguard of that backlash.
Now that the Supreme Court has blocked the federal vaccine standard, which would have compelled large companies nationwide to mandate Covid-19 vaccines or weekly testing for a total of 80 million workers, businesses in Texas and Florida have been left to navigate complex local laws and muddled public health guidelines as they weigh how to protect their workers.
As the coronavirus increasingly makes clear that it is here to stay, businesses are feeling the pressure to reopen and re-establish some semblance of normalcy. That means figuring out what their safety precautions should look like, especially if their operations span states with drastically different pandemic rules.
