covid-19 vaccination
What prevents an employer from mandating vaccination?
<p>IANAL: Would said requirement need to be found unconstitutional in order to prevent mandating vaccine in prisons, where prisoners are literally a captive audience?  The two stakeholders comprise at least prisoners &amp; guards. What legal hurdles would such a vaccination mandate face?</p>
<p><strong>CONTEXT:</strong> The headline <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/us-prison-guards-refusing-vaccine-covid-19-outbreaks-76461118?cid=clicksource_4380645_4_mobile_web_only_headlines_headlines_hed" rel="nofollow noreferrer">US prison guards refusing vaccine despite COVID-19 outbreaks</a> indicates:
<em>Prison guards are refusing coronavirus vaccines at alarming rates.</em>.</p>
<p><strong>UPDATE: September 2021:</strong>
&quot;My job as president is to protect all Americans,&quot; Mr. Biden said Thursday. &quot;So tonight, I'm announcing that the Department of Labor is developing an emergency rule to require all employers with 100 or more employees that together employ over 80 million workers to ensure their workforces are fully vaccinated or show a negative test at least once a week.&quot;
<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/biden-covid-19-vaccine-mandates-announcement/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">reference link / source</a></p>

<p>One thing that may prevent this is contract law: the employer may not have the power to impose new requirements on employees during the period of the current contract. For prisons that are run by government agencies, there may also be statutory restrictions on what the warden or Bureau of Prisons can compel employees to do without legislative approval (this is a general feature of government employment). There are additional disability and religion-based protections for employees. Apart from such legal considerations, the vaccine is not universally available, which explains why not all employers mandate that employees get vaccinated. It's not clear how prisons, specifically, are relevant: there's no general rule that &quot;because it's a prison, normal law is suspended&quot;.</p>
