Southwest Airlines has always been an exciting place to work, but these days things are getting exciting for them in more ways than one. They tried to impose a vaccine mandate on their employees, which caused an untold number of pilots to decide not to show up to work. Employees stood outside Southwest’s Dallas headquarters with signs including “jobs, not jabs” and “freedom, not force.” Predictably, thousands of flights were cancelled as Southwest discovered just how far their pilots were willing to go to protect their liberties. The company claimed that the cancellations were due to widespread weather problems, which prompted conservatives to point out that this alleged foul weather only seemed to affect one airline. Strangely, as soon as Southwest rolled back their vaccine mandate, the weather problem disappeared. Either God really doesn’t like vaccine mandates, or weather was not the problem.
Sadly, Southwest is just one of many companies nationwide who are disrespecting the bodily autonomy of their employees by imposing vaccine mandates. Companies are trying to justify their imposition of vaccine mandates on workers by citing Biden’s edict that all employers having at least 100 employees impose the requirement of being jabbed. But doubts grow about whether the Constitution grants the federal government that authority.
A majority of the Supreme Court felt in 2012 that there was not a constitutional basis for imposing Obamacare, and it survived only due to a contrived interpretation of the law as a tax. There is no tax in the vaccine mandate, so it should be as unconstitutional as Obamacare would have been. Despite that fact, Americans have had a hard time even getting exemptions from the mandates. A timid decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ordered Western Michigan University to at least have the courtesy of informing football players why their religious exemptions were rejected. The players successfully sued after their exemptions were denied, and the court should have tossed out the mandate entirely. Dictators grab control as long as others allow it. It is overdue for courts and politicians to end this power grab disguised as vaccine mandates.
