Following Iowa’s labor commissioner announcing that the state would not enforce the federal vaccine-or-testing requirement for large employers and the U.S. Supreme Court barring such mandate, State Senate Republicans have introduced a bill that would prohibit the commissioner from enforcing such standards in the future.

District 42 Senator Jeff Reichman of Montrose and others introduced Senate File 2012 last week that would prohibit the labor commissioner from implementing, enforcing, or conforming to any federal occupational safety and health standard relating to COVID-19 that would require an employer to carry out certain actions relating to COVID-19. Those actions are listed as determining whether an employee or prospective employee has received a COVID-19 vaccine, determining whether they have received a test for current or past COVID-19 infection or inquiring about the results of such a test, or conducting a test to see whether that person has or has ever had a COVID infection. Reichman cites worker shortages as cause for this legislation, “We have shortages and people who are being denied care and I know our local hospital has announced that they’re cutting elective surgeries again, elective procedures again. So we know what that did to healthcare as a whole during the early stages of COVID and now we’ve come full circle to it again.”

This bill would not apply to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ vaccine or exemption mandate for healthcare agencies that was allowed to go into effect by the U.S. Supreme Court. Iowa healthcare workers that receive CMS federal funds must be fully vaccinated by March 15th. As of Tuesday, Iowa currently has 76 long term care facilities with COVID-19 outbreaks as the state has also seen the highest number of current hospitalizations since its pandemic peak in November of 2020.