TOPEKA, Kan. — Republican legislators moved Monday to make it easy for workers in Kansas to claim religious exemptions from COVID-19 vaccine mandates, but their leaders were divided over whether they also needed to promise unemployment benefits for people refusing the shots.
Republican leaders also faced a push by some conservatives to prohibit private employers from imposing their own vaccine mandates, whether or not President Joe Biden's mandates survive the lawsuits challenging them. That proposal emerged from a debate in the state Senate.
The GOP-controlled Legislature forced Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly to convene a special session to consider ways for Kansas to push back against Biden's mandates. Republicans wanted to require employers to accept all requests from workers for religious exemptions, and some wanted to guarantee that vaccine-refusing workers would be eligible for unemployment benefits.
Top Republicans debated whether such unemployment benefits would be necessary. Some said their proposal on religious exemptions likely would cover any worker who wanted to avoid getting inoculated.
The Senate voted 25-13 to approve a bill with the proposed religious exemptions, the guarantee of unemployment benefits, and the ban on vaccine mandates by private employers. The version passed by the House, 78-40, included only the proposal on religious exemptions.
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