DeSantis signs legislation to permanently ban COVID restrictions in public and private sector
This is a developing story.
DESTIN, Fla. (FLV) – Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a slew of legislation that includes permanently banning COVID-19 mandates Thursday.
One signed law prohibits business entities and governmental entities from requiring a person to provide a vaccine passport or requiring COVID-19 test to enter a business or being hired to a job or continuing employment.
“The purpose of them was not to safeguard your health. The purpose of them was to control your behavior,” DeSantis said. “They wanted you to behave the way they thought that they were willing to use coercion to do it. So that was totally unacceptable.”
It prohibits discrimination against any person based on knowledge or belief of a person’s vaccination or COVID-19 post-infection recovery status or failure to take a COVID-19 test.
It applies to any vaccine under “emergency use authorization,” not just COVID vaccines.
The law bars educational institutions from requiring people to wear masks.
“They may be people that have a lot of credentials, but if they’re wrong, they’re wrong. And there is a right answer when it comes to this stuff. So we want to make sure that people are protected in Florida. California doesn’t want to do that. We want to do it,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis said he signed legislation that bans gain of function research, making Florida the first state in the U.S. to formally ban it.
“You know, you’re doing gain of function in WuHan with our tax dollars and this happens, you should be held accountable,” DeSantis said. “Where’s the accountability for people like Fauci and these other folks when they said they never did any of this?”
DeSantis also announced the signing of legislation that allows physicians to object certain treatments based on conscience-based objections.
The law allows health care providers to opt out of providing a health care services on the basis of a conscience-based objection.
It prohibits health care providers from being discriminated against or suffering adverse action for declining to participate in a health care service.
“It ensures that physicians can follow the data, not dictates. And we want our physicians practicing evidence-based medicine, we don’t want it to just defer to authority or to just follow the herd,” DeSantis said. “So that is now law in the state of Florida, so this is kind of the opposite of what states like California has done.”
“Where would you rather practice as a physician, a place where you can make your own judgment or not?”
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo explained how individuals have an “absolute God given right” to make decisions on their own.
“We have autonomy over what we put in our body and the decisions we make about, about our health and how we take care of ourselves,” Ladapo said.
DeSantis also signed legislation that provides an exemption from public records requirements for certain information relating to complaints or investigations regarding violations of provisions protecting from discrimination based on health care choices.
