What is the legality of the vaccine mandates in British Columbia, Canada? British Columbia unveiled a plan to require proof of COVID-19 vaccination for entry into multiple settings, including but not limited to restaurants, bars, gyms, night clubs, indoor ticketed events, and on-campus student housing. The requirement for a single dose will go into effect on September 13, 2021, and by October 24, 2021, will be extended to require two doses. The province has confirmed that apart from young children, there will be no exceptions to this mandate. This includes people who for medical reasons cannot be safely vaccinated, or people avoiding it for religious purposes. While there aren't as many valid medical reasons for avoiding the COVID-19 vaccine as some might try to argue, they do exist, albeit rarely. Section 15 - Equality Rights of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states the following: (1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability. Similarly, section 1 (b) of the Canadian Bill of Rights states a similar rule. Given this, how is the government legally able to enforce the mandate in its current form? If people do exist who cannot receive the vaccine due to a physical disability such as life-threatening allergies, is the refusal to accept these exceptions unconstitutional? While I would imagine a religious reason for avoiding a vaccine would be hard to argue in court, would the same principal still apply?
No rights are absolute. In particular, Charter s. 1 specifies rights are &quot;subject only to reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.&quot; Generally speaking, when rights are infringed the courts will consider it a justifiable infringement if it serves a substantial purpose while proportionate, rational and minimally infringing (Oakes test, though there's a heap of subsequent case law refining the test). While the exact order text isn't yet available, determining constitutionality would typically be a detailed analysis a judge would have to perform after hearing arguments from parties to a case (I assume the order will eventually be published here). In my own opinion, I would imagine such an order without appropriate medical exemption would be unconstitutional. It would seem to be disproportionate to deny freedom of movement to a presumably very small number of persons who could do little to remedy their medical condition. As a similar example from another province, a Quebec court ruled that a Covid-19 curfew requiring people to remain inside at night would not apply to homeless people due to discriminatory and disproportionate effect. Assuming the order to be similar in nature to existing BC orders on gatherings and mask-wearing, I would imagine lack of religious exceptions to be constitutional, as those orders have already been challenged and upheld against religious objections (though I believe appeals are still possible). The nature of the identified infringements against religious groups was considered reasonably proportionate, rational and minimal enough when weighed against the legitimate governmental need to contain the spread of Covid-19. P.S. The Canadian Bill of Rights has in practice been largely superseded by the Charter. Furthermore, it is completely inapplicable here as it is a federal statute with no effect on provincial matters.
Is there a law regarding this? The relevant law is the Employment Standards Act of British Columbia which only requires an employer to provide meal breaks for employees but not somewhere for them to eat their meal. (1) An employer must ensure (a) that no employee works more than 5 consecutive hours without a meal break, and (b) that each meal break lasts at least 1/2 hour. What legal actions are possible? None - unless there's a breach of, say, health and safety legislation by allowing meals to be eaten in a refuse area, but that's off-topic.
You can't just interpret the word &quot;require&quot; in isolation, you have to focus on what is allowed vs. disallowed by law. Guidance point K.1 starts with the rhetorical question Under the ADA, Title VII, and other federal employment nondiscrimination laws, may an employer require all employees physically entering the workplace to be vaccinated for COVID-19? They respond that no federal EEO laws prohibit such a requirement &quot;subject to the reasonable accommodation provisions of Title VII and the ADA and other EEO considerations&quot; (thus providing an answer to the question whether it can always be &quot;required&quot;. However, they do not discuss the possibility that other laws (non-EEO, state, local: also contract law) that would prevent an employer from &quot;requiring&quot; a vaccination. They do not elaborate on ways that an employer might &quot;require&quot; a vaccination, leaving it to the inventive reader to figure out what legal leverage a company might have to get compliance. Assaulting non-compliant employees is not legal; withholding wages is not legal. Reassigning a non-compliant worker to working in the sub-basement may be legal, requiring a non-compliant worker to wear an anti-vaxer warning badge might be legal. Firing the employee, or reducing their hours to 0 until they comply, might be legal. But the EEOC is not advising employers in safe ways to sanction non-compliant workers, they are just stating their interpretation of applicable anti-discrimination law. Indeed, they can only address matters of discrimination, because that is what they address in general. They do not write the labor law regulations, that's the job of the Dept. of Labor. They are not giving legal advice as to the scope of allowed requirements set by employers.
Could the new mRNA vaccines have come to market without any testing? No. The FDA still has to approve emergency limited approvals of new vaccines. At least as a practical matter, the FDA requires some testing to grant this approval, although not the full testing regime of a non-emergency application for a new vaccine or drug approval. FDA approval is the limiting principle that prevents emergency drug approval from being used recklessly despite a lack of civil liability. I know this from news reports about the COVID vaccine approval process and can't cite chapter and verse of the relevant statutes. If there are no legal consequences, what reason would pharmaceutical companies have to conduct clinical trials before going to market? Drug companies have to get FDA approval for every single product they make. If they act in bad faith to get emergency approval, the FDA will not treat them well in the future and could even revoke their authority to manufacture any drugs going forward. Also, keep in mind that vaccines are not particularly high profit margin products for drug companies.
Section 2 (a) of the order says: The heads of executive departments and agencies (agencies) shall immediately take action, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to require compliance with CDC guidelines with respect to wearing masks, maintaining physical distance, and other public health measures by: on-duty or on-site Federal employees; on-site Federal contractors; and all persons in Federal buildings or on Federal lands. (emphasis added) It would seem that if, in future, the CDC changes its guidelines to indicate that mask wearing is no longer needed (presumably in the wake of a large decline in cases) the order would mean compliance with such revised guidelines, and thus reduced or eliminated mask wearing, when and if that is advised. The order does not contain any dated sunset or reevaluation provision. But the President can at any time revise or rescind this or any other Executive Order. The Twitter comments could be taken as an intention to reevaluate and a hope to be able to remove, the order within 100 days. In any case Twitter comments are not legally binding, nor are press conference statements or other public statements by the President. Evert if the order had contained a fixed sunset date, the President could always issue a new order extending this one at any time. Note also that the order only instructs department heads to &quot;take action, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law.&quot; This leaves significant room for judgement as to what is &quot;appropriate.&quot;
One thing that may prevent this is contract law: the employer may not have the power to impose new requirements on employees during the period of the current contract. For prisons that are run by government agencies, there may also be statutory restrictions on what the warden or Bureau of Prisons can compel employees to do without legislative approval (this is a general feature of government employment). There are additional disability and religion-based protections for employees. Apart from such legal considerations, the vaccine is not universally available, which explains why not all employers mandate that employees get vaccinated. It's not clear how prisons, specifically, are relevant: there's no general rule that &quot;because it's a prison, normal law is suspended&quot;.
This is largely a matter of state law. In California, for example, this would be plainly unlawful (my emphasis): All persons within the jurisdiction of this state are free and equal, and no matter what their sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, or sexual orientation are entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or services in all business establishments of every kind whatsoever. (Unruh Civil Rights Act, California Civil Code section 51) Other states may define "business" more narrowly, or exclude professional services. Also, there is the question of professional ethics. Discriminating against a racial group will likely run afoul of the rules of the licensing board, the AMA, the APA, and other organizations. Finally, remind your friend that every racist has what they regard as good reasons for their racism, and your friend is not special in that regard.
canada Not merely because of the length or legalese, and not the entire contract. But there is a line of authority in Canadian law that can lead to exclusion-of-liability clauses being unenforceable, and length is a factor. When there are unusual exclusion clauses, inconsistent with the main purpose of the contract, executed in hasty circumstances, where the contract is long and/or small and the signer's attention is not drawn to the exclusion clauses, courts have been wary to enforce them. Karroll v. Silver Star Mountain Resorts Ltd., 1988 CanLII 3294 (BC SC): [18] ... to allow someone to sign a document where one has reason to believe he is mistaken as to its contents, is not far distant from active misrepresentation. [19] In the usual commercial situation, there is no need for the party presenting the document to bring exclusions of liability or onerous terms to the attention of the signing party, nor need he advise him to read the document. In such situations, it is safe to assume that the party signing the contract intends to be bound by its terms. [20] But situations may arise which suggest that the party does not intend to be bound by a term. In Tilden the hasty, informal way in which the contract was signed, the fact that the clause excluding liability was inconsistent with the overall purpose of the contract, and the absence of any real opportunity to read and understand the document given its length and the amount of small print on its reverse side, led the Court to conclude that the defendant should have known that the plaintiff had no intention of consenting to the onerous exclusion in question. In these special circumstances, there was a duty on Tilden to take reasonable measures to bring the exclusion clause to the attention of Mr. Clendenning. Tilden Rent-A-Car Co. v. Clendenning, 1978 CanLII 1446 (Ont. C.A.) said: In modern commercial practice, many standard form printed documents are signed without being read or understood. In many cases the parties seeking to rely on the terms of the contract know or ought to know that the signature of a party to the contract does not represent the true intention of the signer, and that the party signing is unaware of the stringent and onerous provisions which the standard form contains. Under such circumstances, I am of the opinion that the party seeking to rely on such terms should not be able to do so in the absence of first having taken reasonable measures to draw such terms to the attention of the other party, and, in the absence of such reasonable measures, it is not necessary for the party denying knowledge of such terms to prove either fraud, misrepresentation or non est factum. In the case at bar, Tilden Rent-A-Car took no steps to alert Mr. Clendenning to the onerous provisions in the standard form of contract presented by it. The clerk could not help but have known that Mr. Clendenning had not in fact read the contract before signing it. Indeed the form of the contract itself with the important provisions on the reverse side and in very small type would discourage even the most cautious customer from endeavouring to read and understand it. Mr. Clendenning was in fact unaware of the exempting provisions. Under such circumstances, it was not open to Tilden Rent-A-Car to rely on those clauses, and it was not incumbent on Mr. Clendenning to establish fraud, misrepresentation or non est factum. Having paid the premium, he was not liable for any damage to the vehicle while being driven by him. As Lord Denning stated in Neuchatel Asphalte Co. Ltd. v. Barnett, [1957] 1 W.L.R. 356 at p. 360: &quot;We do not allow printed forms to be made a trap for the unwary.&quot;