Florida businesses, cities and schools risk big fines for defying the governor with pandemic mandates

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Thu, 2021-11-04 12:41 — mike kraft

Florida businesses, cities and schools risk big fines for defying the governor with pandemic mandates The state has a special email address for people to report entities requiring masks or vaccination despite DeSantis’s opposition. Lori Rozsa Washington Post

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Ashley Hanna didn’t intend to defy Gov. Ron DeSantis when she offered vaccine-only classes at her yoga studio. But to accommodate clients who were worried about the coronavirus as the delta variant was burning through Florida, she expanded her weekly schedule to include two sessions reserved for people vaccinated against the virus.

“We’re a small business, and there are some clients who, if we didn’t have these classes, we would lose them,” said Hanna, who owns Titanium Yoga in Ponte Vedra Beach, south of Jacksonville. “We wanted to give people a choice.”

That decision put Hanna on a list of more than 100 businesses and local governments reported to the state as violating a Florida law championed by DeSantis against vaccine requirements. The governor’s critics say his actions are only empowering aggrieved anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers. ...

DeSantis has resisted public health mandates from the start of the pandemic. Despite guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and studies showing how masks and vaccines help protect people from the coronavirus, the governor has issued executive orders and filed lawsuits to keep those safeguards optional.

A measure he signed into law in May bans businesses, local governments and schools from making customers or patrons show proof of vaccination or “post-infection recovery” and imposes penalties of up to $5,000 per violation. Last month, the state hit Leon County, which includes Florida’s capital of Tallahassee, with a $3.5 million fine over its vaccine mandate for workers. The county is contesting the action.

Yet entities that run afoul of DeSantis’s anti-mandate mandates are not only risking hefty monetary punishments. Some have also been targeted with threats from the public. Like Hanna, many remain unsure of what they can and can’t do to address covid worries.

They may get some clarity later this month. DeSantis is convening a special legislative session to pass a new law ensuring “medical freedom." ...

John Yoo, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said DeSantis is contradicting himself through his actions as well as straying from conservative principles.

“A lot of conservatives might not agree with Gov. DeSantis penalizing private businesses for requiring vaccines, and for interfering with the way private owners decide how they want to run their business,” Yoo said. “The governor might say the reason he’s doing this is because he thinks businesses shouldn’t threaten employees with losing their livelihoods. But if you believe in free markets, then you’d say, the employee could go work for someone else.” ...

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