SHERIDAN — Striking a balance between protecting Wyoming businesses and individual civil liberties took priority in the Wyoming Senate Wednesday as legislators debated one of the two bills it passed that day.
Senate File 1003, sponsored by Sen. Cheri Steinmetz, R-Lingle, aims to prevent discrimination based on COVID-19 vaccination status.
It is one of 20 bills originally introduced in the Senate and one of only two that made it out of Senate committee hearings Tuesday.
“I think we’re trying to find that place where we can protect individual freedom and liberty and protect our Constitution and not harm our businesses,” Steinmetz said.
SF1003, as some legislators noted Wednesday, gets at the heart of the matter of vaccination passports. It prohibits discrimination based on COVID-19 vaccination status as it relates to accessing health insurance as well as other benefits, services or education opportunities.
It also includes a section that would prohibit individuals from inquiring about another person’s vaccination status, which sparked a debate on the Senate floor about First Amendment rights.
“The free speech argument doesn’t really hold a lot of water when it comes to violating somebody’s civil rights,” Sen. Bo Biteman, R-Parkman, said.
He went on to point out that asking somebody their vaccination status for the purpose of denying them employment or services is unacceptable and creates division, just as segregation did in the past.
“We’re beyond that in this country, thank God,” Biteman said. “But are we going back to this divisiveness with this country where we’re going to treat people based on their choice of whether or not to get a vaccine? … If we’re going down that road, count me out, that’s not the America I want to live in.”
As originally written, though, the bill would not narrow the scope of vaccination inquiries to employment situations.
Several legislators also discussed the position in which the legislation would place Wyoming businesses, which could face criminal and civil penalties for any violations of the new laws if they choose to follow federal vaccine mandates.
“I oppose mandates. I oppose what this administration is doing,” Sen. Dave Kinskey, R-Sheridan, said. “But we don’t want to punish the victims, which are Wyoming businesses.”
Kinskey read a letter from a Sheridan-based manufacturer that generates two-thirds of its business from the Department of Defense. Recently, the company received its first notice of a contract including language requiring compliance with the federal vaccine mandate for government contractors.
“I will wait this out as long as possible to gain more clarity,” the letter stated. “But after Nov. 14, if and when we start getting DOD contracts that include that mandate language, this will be a simple business decision.”
The letter also pleaded that legislators not follow other states, which punish businesses for following federal law.
“Something like penalizing a Wyoming business or person for following a federal law in order to retain its revenue and workforce would be a detriment to us and many other businesses,” the letter stated.
Many legislators acknowledged that SF1003 isn’t perfect, but because the special session rules did not pass, the governing bodies have the time to amend the bill and work toward solving the issues discussed Wednesday.
Correcting an error
While the special session’s stated purpose is to address COVID-19 vaccine mandates, the Senate started Wednesday discussing a bill related to the state’s gambling statutes.
A piece of legislation passed in the regular session earlier this year included an unintentional error in the drafting of the bill known as a scrivener’s error.
That error repealed a 2020 piece of legislation in its entirety rather than one section of the bill — a section that set a one-year limit for the allowance of skill-based games.
Senate File 1019 corrects the unintentional repeal of the entire bill to the repeal of just the section of the bill regarding the one-year limit.
“There’s no fun in admitting that you made a mistake, but we need to own it,” Sen. Affie Ellis, R-Cheyenne, said. “We need to fix it and make it right.”
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