The short answer is yes, they can. But it’s a little more complicated than the short answer.
Employers historically have enjoyed pretty wide latitude to impose standards, policies, requirements and restrictions on their employees.
And that latitude includes vaccinations, if the employer can show reasonable cause for the policy. Here is how the Texas Education Association expressed it in answering questions raised by public school employees:
It is generally understood that an employer can require an employee to be vaccinated if the employer can show there is a “legitimate business necessity”—in other words, a very good reason—for the employer to require vaccinations.
But, that’s not all. There are exceptions.
If an employee can show they either have a sincerely held religious objection to vaccination or have a legitimate health concern (such as an allergy), the employee can likely be exempted from the vaccination requirement.
Valid exemptions will likely be relatively few, but some people do have long-standing religious objections or medical reasons for opting out. And employers should try to accommodate those exceptions to the best of their ability.
While employers might choose a “carrot” rather than a “stick”—i.e., incentives rather than mandates—to achieve their goal, the basic principle is that U.S. employers have the freedom to set the parameters for their workplace and employees. That is truer for private sector than public sector employers—precisely because the private sector isn’t part of the government—and truer for non-union shops than union shops.
That freedom is critical to a thriving free market and growing economy. And yet in many areas government policies are eroding that freedom.
- Employers should have the freedom to determine what they pay their employees. Minimum wage laws impinge on that freedom.
- Employers should have the freedom to determine what benefits they offer their employees. Yet government is increasingly impinging on that freedom—for example, by requiring employers to provide Obamacare-qualified health coverage.
- And employers should have the freedom to terminate employees who either do not perform up to expectations or create disruptions in the workplace. And yet both government regulations and union contracts often interfere with those decisions.
Many employers have struggled to keep their doors open during the pandemic while trying their best to accommodate employee concerns and government-imposed mandates.
Some people want to use the pandemic as an excuse to expand government’s role in the workplace. Most of those efforts should be resisted.
Free markets need flexibility to meet consumer demand while managing and maintaining a competent workforce.