Action Alert! The Governor’s Bill Must Be Amended
SB 211 designed first and foremost for employers and not the people
If Governor Noem truly believes in protecting South Dakota citizens from the Covid-19 vaccine mandates, she will amend her bill, SB 211. As indicated in last week’s post, there are several issues that we will write about later, but the most glaring problem is Section 2, subsection (5)—the “weasel clause.”
Here is what it says: “This act does not… require an employer to make an accommodation that would impose an undue hardship on the employer.”
As written it is blatantly obvious that Governor Noem worked with employers and special interests such as the SD Chamber of Commerce, and the medical community (likely negotiated by one of the Governor’s closest advisors and lobbyists for Sanford, Matt McCaulley) to craft the bill in such a way that makes it look like she is protecting individual freedom, but as long as the bill contains this clause, it isn’t much different from her initial position. She should not deceive the public and she should be held to her message delivered in her State of the State speech when she said,
“The COVID vaccination should be a choice. And we should reject the efforts that we’re seeing in other parts of the country to divide us into two classes: vaccinated and unvaccinated. Unvaccinated Americans are still Americans. We live in a free country – free to make our own decisions. The government does not get to make them for us.”
Mandate Free SD believes there are three simple truths that underlie this issue. Governor Noem was elected to protect the freedom and rights of every SD citizen first and foremost and not her special interests.
ACTION ALERT!
Email the members of the Senate Commerce and Energy Committee today. The bill will be heard in just a few days Tuesday, Feb. 8. Email the senators individually. Ask them to amend the bill and strike lines 22-23 of Section 2, the “weasel clause”, from the bill.
Sen. Casey Crabtree Casey.Crabtree@sdlegislature.gov
Sen. Red Dawn Foster RedDawn.Foster@sdlegislature.gov
Sen. Al Novstrup Al.Novstrup@sdlegislature.gov
Sen. Lee Schoenbeck Lee.Schoenbeck@sdlegislature.gov
Sen. Jim Stalzer Jim.Stalzer@sdlegislature.gov
Sen. Wayne Steinhauer Wayne.Steinhauer@sdlegislature.gov
Sen. Erin Tobin Erin.Tobin@sdlegislature.gov
Sen. David Wheeler David.Wheeler@sdlegislature.gov
Sen. Larry Zikmund Larry.Zikmund@sdlegislature.gov
Email Governor Noem and ask her to first and foremost protect all SD citizens. Ask that the bill be amended to strike lines 22-23 of Section 2 immediately in the Senate Commerce and Energy Committee hearing on Tuesday.
Inform others. Share this post and write a letter to the editor of your local paper.