ACTION ALERT! Bills Need Your Help
It's time to strike a decisive blow against vaccine mandates.
Please read all the way through this post as there are several important items for action today.
While the Governor’s bill remains unamended and extremely limited in its protections for ALL South Dakotans, there is hope on the horizon! This week HB 1258 was hoghoused. The term ‘Hoghouse’ is used to describe the procedure to completely rewrite a bill. This “new” bill is one that Mandate Free SD hopes will make its way through, but it will need a massive effort by the grassroots to help it.
Section 1 of the bill says it all: “This Act shall be referred to as the COVID-19 Vaccine Freedom of Conscience Act.” The language of the bill essentially obliterates mandates completely. Section 2 defines “conscience". The real meat is in Section 3,
“No person may be subjected to any disciplinary action; being terminated, demoted, or losing employment status in any way; loss of student status, including status in a particular study program; nor may any person be denied access to any business premises as a result of the person's decision to decline to receive a COVID-19 vaccination on the basis of conscience.”
The bill also provides some teeth. Any person has the right to bring a civil lawsuit for violations. There was a long line of lobbyists from the medical and business communities trying to stop HB 1258, which was not the case for SB 211, the Governor’s bill. 🤔 More evidence that the Governor’s bill is mostly a showpiece rather than a serious effort to protect the rights of all South Dakotans.
Unfortunately, HB 1258 does exclude medical personnel, but only for as long as conflicting federal medicare and medicaid regulations are in place.
ACTION ALERT! Contact SD Representatives (House Members) before Wednesday at noon. Email your own representatives, and then others. You can also call your representatives over the long weekend. There isn’t session on Monday which might be a great time to contact them by phone. Ask them to vote YES and pass HB 1258. Here is an important tip: When you send an email, be sure to include where you are from. If you are a constituent, please put that in the subject line. It is important for them to know who is contacting them and that you are from South Dakota. Please don’t send bulk emails. Emails to individuals are always best.
HB 1224 is another very good bill. This bill was partially heard in the House Taxation Committee last week and held over. It will be taken up again this Wednesday. The bill is “an act to extend unemployment insurance benefits to individuals who are unemployed because of their refusal to obtain a COVID-19 vaccination.”
ACTION ALERT! Email each of the Representatives on the House Taxation Committee this weekend. Ask them to vote YES to pass HB 1224.
Mandate Free SD continues to carefully monitor SB 211, Governor Noem’s vaccine bill. As you probably saw last week, it passed the Senate with a vote of 31-4. No substantive amendments have been made to the bill. As we have written previously, without any amendments, the bill will not help many and is a show piece for the Governor as she publicly professes to promote freedom from Covid-19 mandates, but collaborates with the business and medical communities who want to preserve coercive mandates, as was heard loud and clear in the testimony last week on HB 1258.
ACTION ALERT! If you are on Facebook or Twitter and see posts by Governor Noem, please reply with a link to this post by Mandate Free SD that make clear the amendments necessary for her bill. Continue to let her know that if her bill is not amended, to 1) Get rid of Section 2, subsection (6))—the “weasel clause.” 2) Strike the sunset clause. 3) Amend the bill to “follow the science” on natural immunity, she is not being true to her word. Ask Governor Noem to please protect the freedom of ALL South Dakotans.