In a 77-63 vote that fell mostly along party lines, the House of Representatives moved Tuesday to kill a bill that would have allowed unvaccinated healthcare workers to return to work in the medical field.
The bill, introduced by Rep. David Boyer (R-Poland), would have effectively nullified Gov. Janet Mills’ controversial and ongoing vaccine mandate had it become law.
The bill would have opened the door for hospitals and healthcare providers to rehire former employees who refused to take the Covid-19 shots for philosophical or religious reasons.
On Oct. 22, 2021, Gov. Mills mandated experimental Covid-19 injections as a condition of working for a healthcare provider.
“It is this policy that will keep health care workers and their patients alive,” Mills said at the time.
However, the policy led to thousands of health care workers exiting the industry rather than receiving the injection, exacerbating a workforce shortage, and public health officials in Maine have never proven that any lives have been saved as a result of the mandate.
The Maine Legislature removed religious and philosophical mandate exemptions for all vaccines in 2019, prior to the Covid-19 outbreak. Boyer’s amended bill would have restored those exemptions, but only as applied to Covid-19 shots, not the standard schedule of immunizations.
“I think it’s a no brainer,” Boyer said.
Boyer said the bill reflects the medical and scientific communities’ current understanding of the science regarding the Covid-19 shots and transmission rates.
Like vaccine mandates imposed in other jurisdictions, Mills originally justified her policy based on the widespread misconception that the vaccine would prevent or inhibit the transmission of the virus.
It’s now broadly understood that the Covid-19 shots do not currently and never did diminish or block transmission of the virus.
Indeed, earlier this year Mills herself contracted Covid-19 for the second time since she received the state-approved course of injections.
“We know the vaccine does not stop transmission,” said Boyer. “They told us during the beginning of the pandemic that it would. They were wrong or they lied.”
“It’s time after two and a half years to address this,” he said.
Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn), a former nurse, pointed to medical research that showed that natural immunity obtained through an infection is equal to or greater than the immunity conferred through vaccinations.
“New York and many other states have been following the science and repealed their mandates,” said Libby.
In addition to being based on the most current medical science, Republican supporters of the bill said restoring the religious and philosophical exemptions would allow hospitals and health care facilities to rehire trained staff and professionals who lost their jobs because of the mandate.
Although there are no official estimates on how many healthcare workers lost their jobs because of the mandate, Libby said the CEO of Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston told Androscoggin County lawmakers recently that the hospital lost more than 200 staff because of the mandate.
She said the workforce challenges observed in Maine’s healthcare system are not entirely attributable to vaccine mandates, but that lifting the mandate would help hospitals bring skilled healthcare workers back to work.
Rep. Nina Milliken (D-Blue Hill) and Rep. Kevin O’Connell (D-Brewer) were the only Democrats to join Republicans in the final vote.
A handful of Democratic lawmakers spoke about why they did not want to let unvaccinated nurses and healthcare professionals return to work.
Rep. Anne Graham (D-North Yarmouth) posed a compelling hypothetical that explained her vote.
“I have a very dear friend who has lymphoma. I want to talk about her. What if she is in a car accident, is admitted to the hospital, and while she’s in the hospital, she gets COVID and dies,” said Graham.
“It’s a possibility,” she said.
Rep. Daniel Sayre (D-Kennebunk) said Maine lawmakers ought to defer to “the science,” but he later clarified that he meant lawmakers should let the Maine CDC make the decision on when to end the mandate.
“I think we should rely on [the Maine CDC] to make the call at the appropriate time and not intervene with the heavy hand of government in telling them what to do,” Sayre said.
Mills decision to intervene with the mandate in the first place suffered a legal setback last month.
On May 25, a decision from a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First District found that a First Amendment complaint filed against the Mills’ mandate should be reconsidered by the lower district court.
That decision found that a lower court judge erred in rejecting the claim that the healthcare worker vaccine mandate violated workers’ First Amendment right to religious freedom.
U.S. District Court Judge Sandra Lynch, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, reasoned that because the state continued to allow secular medical exemptions to the mandate, the plaintiffs’ claim that they had been discriminated against on the basis of their religion was plausible.
