Your employer's ability to coerce you into taking vaccines, or even collect information about your vaccine status is going to be dependent on your state's implementation of HIPAA and ADA laws. California (ironically) and Florida I know have greater protections against such employer medical questions, and whether they fall under HIPAA. From the ADA perspective, if you are compelled to provide proof of vaccination or an explanation as to why you haven't been vaccinated, that may result in an incidental disclosure of a disability, thereby violating ADA. This is what corporate legal teams are warning leadership of right now. Everyone is walking a fine line, trying to avoid a lawsuit, but pushing forward where they feel they can.

We need to be educating ourselves on our respective states' implementation of these laws and urge lawmakers to tighten those protections. You can request that your state rep or senator's policy staff conduct a policy analysis to determine what the present status of the law is. We're talking about minor tweaks to existing HIPAA language. Nothing grandiose. We cannot rely on lawsuits to give us justice in 10 years.

Employers are probably going to get sued no matter what they do. I'd be curious to know if there are any lobbying for greater right to violate your privacy and protections against litigation. I'm reaching out to Tennessee's House Research staff this week to run down what our legal landscape is. Will report back when I learn anything useful.