SAN DIEGO (CNS) -- The San Diego City Council Monday passed an emergency ordinance requiring all city employees to be fully vaccinated from COVID-19 by Wednesday or face getting fired.
The mandate will also apply to all future city employees.
City contractors also must be fully vaccinated, but they have until Jan. 3 to do so.
The city has not made it clear what will happen to any city employee who is only partially vaccinated by Wednesday.
The council voted 8-1 to pass the mandate, with Councilman Chris Cate -- the sole Republican on the council -- as the lone no vote.
Nearly 200 people wrote in and dozens called in to the City Council meeting Monday, the vast majority of whom were opposed to the vaccine mandate. Many used inflammatory language, comparing the mandate to Jim Crow laws and the Holocaust.
"When I hear people referencing the civil rights movement, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. without the experience, that is concerning for me," said Councilwoman Monica Montgomery Steppe. "I don't equate that to this decision today. I don't respect those references, I think they are extremely far-reached," she said.
Councilman Sean Elo-Rivera echoed Montgomery Steppe's comments.
"Nobody is being forced to take the shot," he said. "It is a requirement for certain activities. This is not Jim Crow and this is not genocide."
He said the callers using those comparisons were "tortured logically."
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