Brigid Bergin: This week, Florida's state legislature was back in session. Governor Ron DeSantis called for the week-long special session with the hope of passing laws banning mask and vaccine mandates. On Wednesday. DeSantis got his wish when Florida Republicans passed a package of four bills to combat COVID mandates. The governor signed them into law the following day.

Governor Ron DeSantis: Today, we lift people up.

[cheering]

[applause]

Governor Ron DeSantis: We provide protections for people. No nurse, no firefighter, no police officer, no trucker, no anybody should lose their job because of these COVID jabs and that's what we're doing.

[applause]

Speaker 3: That's right.

Brigid Bergin: The three-day special session was described by Democrats as "political theater." Of course, this isn't the first time Governor DeSantis has targeted COVID-related mandates. Since the start of the pandemic, he's aggressively fought public health measures, even suing the Biden administration over its vaccine requirements for federal contractors. For more on this, we're joined by Lawrence Mower, reporter for The Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald. Lawrence, great to have you here.

Lawrence Mower: Thanks for having me.

Brigid Bergin: Why are we seeing a special legislative session in Florida? What's the big picture goal?

Lawrence Mower: The big picture goal here is to undo this new rule by the Biden administration set by OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, that basically required companies with more than 100 employees to have their employees be vaccinated or submit to weekly testing. For DeSantis who has had a contrarian approach to the pandemic, he said that this rule doesn't take into account all the different situations that people might be in. The vaccine is not a cure-all for everything, he says. To basically stop this rule and create legislation that is directly against that rule, he called for a special session.

Brigid Bergin: Just remind us, how has DeSantis responded to the COVID 19 pandemic? What's been his approach?

Lawrence Mower: Like I mentioned, contrarian is one way to put it.

Brigid Bergin: [laughter].

Lawrence Mower: At the beginning of the pandemic, DeSantis did shut down the state. Bars were closed for months and there were even restrictions early on on beach gatherings and stuff. What DeSantis realized is that those measures didn't stop COVID. Whenever those things led up, COVID just came back. In fact, certainly in his perspective, these lockdowns were pretty destructive, not just economically but also on people's mental health.

He's basically pushed back against the federal restrictions. He said these federal lockdowns and restrictions don't take into account the full scope of people's COVID experience. They don't take into account the fact that if you do get COVID and do recover, you may have some natural immunity to it. He's taking this natural immunity approach. He was very active on vaccines when they first came out.

There was a big push that he did on vaccines, he was doing daily press conferences. As we've learned, the vaccines may not be-all-end-all to this pandemic. DeSantis certainly has realized that and played into the fact that a lot of people just don't want to be vaccinated. DeSantis did not get his vaccine publicly. He's accommodated that sentiment and said, "Basically, not everyone's going to get vaccinated and so what do we do about that?" Firing people, as you heard, is not the answer.

Brigid Bergin: Let's talk about the four bills being considered by the special session and let's start with one about vaccine mandates, what does that entail? What conditions would be imposed on private employers?

Lawrence Mower: Notably, this is not a ban on vaccine mandates. In fact, it makes vaccine mandates legal in Florida, fully legal. However, it says that employers who want to require employees to be vaccinated also have to provide five different opt-outs, different options for employees who do not want to be vaccinated. Those include, if you want to wear a mask in the workplace, that's one option. You can get a religious action assumption, which is very vague.

You can also get a doctor's note stating that you're going to be pregnant or you're pregnant or expecting to be pregnant, that's opt-out. It also offers for natural immunity, as they put it. If you have had COVID and you have a number of antibodies, you can go through weekly, or some kind of medical tests to show that you are immune from COVID, or you could also go too through weekly testing. That's really what it does, it provides for these kind of opt-outs for people who don't want to get vaccinated.

Brigid Bergin: There's also the matter of mask mandates in schools. How did that play out in this special session?

Lawrence Mower: Yes. What they did is basically said that school districts cannot decide whether or not your kid is masked or vaccinated, that's up to the parent. It basically gives a parent the right to say I want my kid masked or not. That's already an administrative rule in Florida but that's now going to be the law.

Brigid Bergin: Do we have a sense of what these bills mean for businesses and local governments? What penalties they could incur?

Lawrence Mower: Yes. For local governments, it does ban vaccine mandates outright for local governments, schools. For private employers, these are new restrictions that frankly they have not been thrilled about. Companies, businesses have said, "Look, we've been navigating the pandemic now for 18 months," [chuckles] or however, it's almost two years at this point. "We know how to run our businesses, we don't need more mandates."

However, they're reluctant to go against the governor on this. A number of companies have already rolled out vaccine mandates, they're now subject to-- If they follow through on these, the laws do provide a method for employees to complain to the attorney general. There's fines included here of $10,000 per incident for companies of less than 100 employees and $50,000 for larger employers.

Brigid Bergin: Governor DeSantis has been critical of OSHA's requirements for COVID safety. Tell me about the bill that would withdraw the state from OSHA. Is that even possible?

Lawrence Mower: Yes, it is possible to withdraw from OSHA. About half the states have done that over the decades. The bill, however, that was passed really doesn't withdraw the state from OSHA. It tells the governor's office to create a plan for a plan to leave OSHA. This is something that would take years, OSHA would have to approve Florida's plan. It would cost Florida a lot of money.

Right now, OSHA does most of the oversight of workplace safety in Florida. That would have to now fall to state government. Frankly, no one really thinks that this is actually going to happen. Republicans and Democrats were basically privately acknowledging that this is just for show. If Florida actually does leave OSHA, which would be at a minimum three to five years away, just to get federal approval to do it-- When the bill comes for this, I imagine that most lawmakers are going to balk at the price tag.

Brigid Bergin: That's interesting. What are some of the other bills the Florida legislature will consider during this session? Does one involve public records?

Lawrence Mower: Yes. As I mentioned, there's a provision in one of the bills that allows for employees to complain about vaccine mandates to the attorney general, and the attorney general can levy fines based on those. The employee complaints to the attorney general were also made secret through one of the other bills that was passed this week. This was a pretty big argument. Florida has a pretty broad public records law, it's pretty good here but, in this case, the entire complaint would be secret.

Of course, Democrats and others were saying, "This is just going to be a way for selective enforcement. We don't know who's complaining to the attorney general against which businesses. If these complaints are secret, we don't know who the attorney general is enforcing these complaints on." That did pass, and those are going to be secret until presumably 2023. Most of these provisions expire-- That's one thing I didn't mention is that most of these provisions expire in 2023.

Brigid Bergin: Lawrence, how much would you say DeSantis actually accomplished in this special session?

Lawrence Mower: We don't really know. There's a big wildcard out here which is that the OSHA rule is on hold right now because a court basically put a stop to it, temporary hold on it. If that rule does stand, then basically a lot of the work that was done this week will be for null. It will overrule what Florida passed this week. However, if it fails, if the OSHA rule does not stand up, then, yes, this will be in effect for every business in Florida, and potentially have big ramifications.

Brigid Bergin: Lawrence Mower is a reporter for The Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald. Lawrence. Thanks for joining us.

Lawrence Mower: Thanks for having me, Bridget.

[00:10:48] [END OF AUDIO]

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