A new bill that was quickly signed into law by Governor Kim Reynolds focuses on employees opting out of a vaccine mandate by employers.

The bill, which was passed by both the Iowa House and Senate during a special legislative session on Thursday and then signed by Reynolds on Friday, allows employees to be exempt from being required to receive a vaccine for a religious or medical reason, without having to show proof. The new law also qualifies those employees who lost their jobs because of a vaccination mandate to receive unemployment benefits. 

District 24 Senator Jesse Green or Harcourt says the bill had bipartisan support in the Senate, with what he thought only about ten Democrats voting against the legislation. He believes what drove this bill was due to the tension between what is happening in Washington, D.C. and Iowans and that leaves the state government and employers caught in the middle.

“And with the dysfunction in Washington, (D.C.), we can’t as a state respond to (President Joe) Biden’s speeches, we have to look at laws that are passed and rules from OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) that come down and they’ve yet to come out with anything. So based on this fear we have employers that have maybe, quickly are anticipating these mandates coming and are imposing these more strict mandates on their employees, which threads this fear.”

Green feels this law is a direct response to the concern of vaccine mandates and he believes it is a temporary fix and provides unemployment benefits for those employees who are let go from their job because of their vaccine status and not make any money.