Tennessee GOP forces through sweeping bill that lets businesses require masks and COVID tests but not vaccines

Tennessee lawmakers stayed at the capitol until early Saturday morning, wrapping up debates over who’s allowed to require masks, negative COVID-19 tests, or vaccines. Schools could soon face much tougher restrictions on masking requirements, and local health departments face having their powers to respond to the pandemic curtailed.

If House Bill 9077/Senate Bill 9014 becomes law, businesses, schools and government buildings won’t be able to enforce a vaccine mandate. However, they are still allowed to require masks, though public schools would have to meet “severe conditions” and could only seek approval on a school-by-school basis for a maximum of 14 days (see the detailed summary).

Ford Motor Co., which just announced a new manufacturing site in West Tennessee, messaged legislators during their debate, saying it was concerned about losing the ability to require masks. The National Federation of Independent Business also sent a letter outlining objections from small business owners.

“We’ve heard from many businesses throughout Tennessee, and they wanted to make sure that it was preserved in this bill their ability to be able to require masks in their businesses,” House Majority Leader William Lamberth said as the two chambers worked out the final details.

Lawmakers also changed the wording to give the same flexibility to private schools, allowing them to require masks.

“I’m trying to figure out … why we’re letting Ford do it, why we’re letting a private school do it, but not my kids’ elementary school do it,” Sen. Jeff Yarbro, D-Nashville, said ahead of the final vote.

Democrats questioned the high threshold for allowing public schools to request permission to mandate masks, which requires more widespread infections than at any point in the pandemic thus far.

“Quite frankly, I feel like if that was the case, we’d be in some sort of apocalyptic situation,” Sen. Raumesh Akbari, D-Memphis, said before voting against the bill.

Vaccine mandates forbidden

Republicans also intended to block vaccine mandates of all kinds during the special session, including those already enforced at arenas and performance venues. But they passed a compromise that may have little practical effect.

Lawmakers did stop businesses from requiring patrons or employees to show proof of vaccination, though a vaccine card can still be used to exclude them from a testing requirement.

“That basically means that those facilities, they can’t require a vaccine passport, but if they are going to require a negative test, we gave them the ability to show a passport if they are requiring a test.,” said Rep. Jason Zachary, R-Knoxville.

Other legislation that passed during the special session, which started Wednesday and ended early Saturday morning:

• School board candidates can now run with a party affiliation.
• Local prosecutors are prevented from ignoring enforcement of specific laws.
• Local health officials are stripped from enforcing a mask mandate or quarantine protocol

Tennessee’s GOP leaders called the special session to get ahead of an impending federal mandate requiring vaccines in businesses with more than 100 employees.

Gov. Bill Lee had resisted calls for a special session on COVID-19 regulations, though he objects to vaccine mandates. The governor hasn’t indicated whether he will sign all of the bills that passed.