Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) is introducing legislation to protect students and employees from vaccine mandates via the Protecting Religious Students from Vaccine Mandates Act, telling Breitbart News that educators “shouldn’t have any role” in determining whether individuals receive a coronavirus vaccine.
While students and employees at public universities can seek religious or medical exemptions from vaccine mandates, those can often be denied arbitrarily. Norman’s proposal takes this issue head-on by requiring these universities to “provide an adequate pathway for religious exemption or risk losing federal funding” minus student aid, according to the congressman’s office.
“We’ve all heard about the employees from businesses and military having problems. Students are the same way. Our offices have had a number of calls and basically, the reason we’re doing it is, there is no way an educator should determine the medical reasons for people turning things down, turning a mandate down,” Norman told Breitbart News.
“They shouldn’t have any role in it. I believe this across the board,” he said, explaining that the bill “puts at risk federal funding that schools that do this,” although he emphasized that it would not affect aid to the student.
“Not the aid to the student, but to the school that without any explanation can just arbitrarily deny a student’s entry into a college based on vaccination,” he said.
Per bill’s text:
A public institution of higher education that has a COVID–19 vaccination requirement shall, through December 31, 2024—
(1) provide a reasonable opportunity for an individual to receive a religious exemption from such vaccination requirement; and
(2) make a good-faith effort to notify individuals who are subject to such vaccination requirement of the opportunity to receive, and procedures to apply for, such a religious exemption, using easily accessible forms of communication such as the website of the institution or official digital or written correspondence from the institution to such individuals.
The bill also “requires the college or university to have to report to the Secretary of Education about why this would provide an undue hardship on any institution,” Norman explained. At that point, the Secretary of Education would determine if funding should be cut off.
A woman is injected with her second dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a Dallas County Health and Human Services vaccination site in Dallas, Thursday, Aug. 26, 2021. Health officials say they have more evidence that vaccinations can offer better protection against COVID-19 than natural immunity from a prior infection. A new study released Friday, Oct. 29, found that unvaccinated people who had been infected months earlier were 5 times more likely to get COVID months than fully vaccinated people who did not have a prior infection. (AP Photo/LM Otero, File)
While schools can continue to have coronavirus mitigation measures, Norman emphasized that the legislation will “not allow them to mandate it [the vaccine] as a condition to get into the school.”
“And it makes them show why there’s harm, which I don’t think they can do,” the South Carolina lawmaker added.
Per the bill’s text:
Unless the Secretary of Education has determined that an institution of higher education is unable to comply with the requirements under subsection (a) due to an undue hardship for the institution based on evidence provided in accordance with subsection (b)(2), a public institution of higher education that has a COVID–19 vaccination requirement and that fails to comply with the requirements under subsection (a) shall not be awarded Federal funds for any purpose, directly or indirectly, including through a contract or sub-contract, except that students at the institution may receive Federal student financial aid.
“They don’t have any right to do that,” Norman said of institutions dictating coronavirus vaccines. “If a student has a religious reason for not wanting to take the vaccine, regardless of the age, but to deny access to the university that they’re paying hard-earned dollars, both from the taxpayer and from the family — it’s just not right.”
“The only way we’re going to be happy is if they stop mandating it. Make it optional, and there’s no way an educator should determine whether somebody gets or doesn’t get a vaccine,” he added.
Cosponsors include Reps. Brian Babin (R-TX), Jeff Duncan (R-SC), Dough Lamborn (R-CO), Bob Good (R-VA), and Mary Miller (R-IL).
The bill comes on the heels of the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Public Health’s (OSHA) emergency temporary standard (ETS), forcing employers with over 100 employees to mandate vaccines or implement vigorous testing requirements, placing the latter burden on the individual. It is already facing a flurry of legal challenges.
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