Is the Illinois Government Really Changing the Healthcare Right of Conscience Act?
NOTE: This piece is a follow-up to my October 11, 2021-published What You Should Know Before Opposing U.S. Employer-Mandated COVID-19 Vaccination (Especially in Illinois). If you don't live in Illinois, take this piece as a useful case-study in how the wicked rule with duplicity.
In the first substantive COVID-19-pandemic-related act by the Illinois legislature, Governor Pritzker's goons purport to nullify any Illinois-based COVID-19-vaccine exemptions implied in the Healthcare Right of Conscience Act (HRCA) with SB1169 [*1]. The original 1998-enacted HRCA [*2], that the 2021-passed SB1169 will ostensibly change, prohibits any employer (public or private) from discriminating against anyone with a sincerely-held religious objection to any form of healthcare in Illinois. Thus, employers mandating COVID-19 vaccines for employees with religious objections is, at least presently, still illegal in Illinois and will likely remain that way until at least June of 2022, and possibly, until a law other than SB1169 is enacted.
Even in Star Wars, the Emperor received his emergency powers via a vote by a galactic legislative assembly, as Jar Jar Binks advocated so eloquently in favor of [*5].
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| Assemblyman Jar Jar Binks advocates granting emergency powers to the Emperor, which were not used to make subjects within the Empire take "boosters" every six months in exchange for rights to employment and/or public travel. |
In the first substantive COVID-19-pandemic-related act by the Illinois legislature, Governor Pritzker's goons purport to nullify any Illinois-based COVID-19-vaccine exemptions implied in the Healthcare Right of Conscience Act (HRCA) with SB1169 [*1]. The original 1998-enacted HRCA [*2], that the 2021-passed SB1169 will ostensibly change, prohibits any employer (public or private) from discriminating against anyone with a sincerely-held religious objection to any form of healthcare in Illinois. Thus, employers mandating COVID-19 vaccines for employees with religious objections is, at least presently, still illegal in Illinois and will likely remain that way until at least June of 2022, and possibly, until a law other than SB1169 is enacted.
You may have read that the Illinois legislature just changed the HRCA and, with the Governor's coming signature, all Illinois-based protections from being mandated to get a COVID-19 vaccine will end (at worst) or will be erased by June of 2022 (at best). But, assuming it's signed into law, what will Illinois' SB1169 actually do? More importantly, how will courts interpret what the legislature will have done or, more precisely, tried to do?
The Irrelevance of Our Legislators
Pritzker has ruled Illinois by executive fiat ever since March 2020 via his "not to exceed 30 days" emergency powers granted to him by a 1988 law, the Emergency Management Agency Act (EMAA) [*3].
Why did his powers continue after 30 days? Supposedly, any new harm alleged by the COVID-19 "pandemic" could reconstitute a new emergency every thirty days instead of relating back to March 2020 when the powers were first asserted. As long as people keep testing positive for COVID-19, the clock on the thirty-day period can continuously be deemed reset. Thus, the legislature never voted to make Pritzker the Emperor of Illinois, but the EMAA allowed him to become one whenever he declared a "disaster," defined by Section 4 of the law as:
an occurrence or threat of widespread or severe damage, injury or loss of life or property resulting from any natural, technological, or human cause, including but not limited to fire, flood, earthquake, wind, storm, hazardous materials spill or other water contamination requiring emergency action to avert danger or damage, epidemic, air contamination, blight, extended periods of severe and inclement weather, drought, infestation, critical shortages of essential fuels and energy, explosion, riot, hostile military or paramilitary action, public health emergencies, cyber incidents, or acts of domestic terrorism.And he's been ruling as Illinois emperor for anything related to COVID-19 (i.e. all rules that matter for Illinoisans) ever since March of 2020 (ignoring a July 2020 lower state-court order nullifying his power [*4] at the time). The legislature was supposed to vote on matters after thirty days. And, if there was some grand vote the Illinois legislature snuck in to reauthorize these emergency powers on a perpetual basis, the media has kept it quiet, as I am currently unware of one.
Even in Star Wars, the Emperor received his emergency powers via a vote by a galactic legislative assembly, as Jar Jar Binks advocated so eloquently in favor of [*5].
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| Jar Jar Binks to the Galactic Senate: "In response to the direct threat to the Republic, meesa propose that the Senate give, immediately, emergency powers to the Supreme Chancellor." |
Not so in Illinois. You see: a vote by the legislature on lockdowns, masking, mandatory vaccines, and other not-so-popular measures would mean voters could hold legislators accountable. Thus, our legislature never votes on these things, out of fear of that accountability at the ballot box. Not that I believe votes are honestly tabulated in Illinois, but with the level of vitriol many have toward lockdowns, masking, and mandatory vaccines, even with stuffing the ballot box, the challenge of maintaining Democrat control might prove difficult. Thus, Democrat's caution toward voting on laws to oppress Illinoisans under the guise of the COVID-19 "pandemic" is understandable from a Machiavellian perspective.
Meanwhile, the Illinois gubernatorial election won't take place until November 2022. Since Illinois is ruled by Democrats and Democrats are the du-jour party for this branch-covidian rule, the legislative assembly remains quiet while Pritzker takes all the heat, under the assumption that, by November 2022, Illinoisans might forget the pain he caused people with his policies or, perhaps, the media would have enough time to brainwash Illinoisans, by then, to see Emperor Pritzker as a benevolent ruler who made hard choices and is worthy of praise (as Facebook constantly enjoys reminding me).This kind of chicanery is exactly how modern democracy works. In the U.S., ever since the 1930s, the trend has been for legislatures to delegate all rule-making authority to the executive branches (i.e. presidents and governors). Thus, any rules related to health, safety, the environment, and much, much more are no longer voted on by our legislatures, which primarily vote on appropriating funds. All the real power has been in the hands of our presidents and governors for decades, or, more acutely, the regulatory bodies the governors and presidents defer to.
This power culminated in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) "voting" to authorize an experimental "vaccine" for use in children to become human shields of transmission for COVID-19 (even though testing for human-to-human transmission was explicitly excluded from the COVID-19 vaccine trials [*6]) that schools will certainly mandate children take. This way, if a giant wave of myocarditis (heart inflammation), a commonly-known side-effect to COVID-19 "vaccination," especially for young men, disables large swaths of the young, Congress and the President can blame the FDA as they plead for your votes.
The Purpose of SB1169
Regulations and executive decree only go so far, as legislatively-passed laws always supersede executive orders. Only when the legislatively-passed law is ambiguous or silent on a matter can an executive order or regulation control its subjects' behavior on that matter through the force of law.
As I've stated on this blog since January 2021 [*7], the real purpose for the "pandemic" is to enact a system of seasonal freedom granted upon proof of seasonal vaccination. All the initiatives on masking and lockdowns were the stick; the carrot has always been giving you back your freedom. The endgame is a system where everyone gets vaccinated and, more importantly, is revaccinated semi-annually. The optimistic scenario points to greed for the motive, as a recurring-market model worth trillions of dollars is at stake as this is applied globally, but I don't discount the possibility an even-more sinister plan is in play that we don't yet fully comprehend.
If elections truly mattered, governors and our fake president wouldn't have the political will to aggravate so many of their subjects with vaccine mandates. As such, it's only important to get just enough voter support to grant enough cover to fake elections going forward with some semblance of legitimacy. Due to the unpopularity of COVID-19-related mitigation measures, as much power as possible must be enshrined in the Illinois executive and its regulators as opposed to its voted-upon legislators. This way, the political damage shared among Democrats can be minimized.
The HRCA, however, is a substantial obstacle to the goal of seasonal re-vaccination in exchange for seasonal freedom. For more information, I link my analysis of the the HRCA and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act's application to religious exemptions to COVID-19 vaccines here [*8]. Suffice to say, the HRCA is the most powerful law in the U.S. for protecting conscientious objectors to any healthcare.
The HRCA, at section 5, makes it illegal for employers to discriminate against (let alone fire) employees who have a conscientious objection to employer-mandated healthcare:At section 7, it makes it illegal to do so in the hiring process:
At section 3(e), “conscience” is defined as:
But, the introductory language of this bill makes that argument untenable. Section 2 defines the "legislative intent" of the law:
Using the HRCA, a temporary restraining order (TRO) was filed against Quincy Physicians Surgeons Clinic, S.C., on October 1, 2021, by the Judge Tad Brenner, in Adams County, Illinois, 2021 MR 193 [*9]. The state-court order states:And, on October 29, 2021, the Northern District of Illinois federal court issued a TRO against Northshore in Illinois from firing employee-plaintiffs who applied for religious exemptions from COVID-19 vaccination, citing both Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the HRCA [*10].
As a practicing attorney, I've helped clients keep their jobs by citing the HRCA in my demand letters to employers playing shenanigans with religious exemptions. It is a powerful law.
The Governor clearly wants to mandate COVID-19 vaccines by executive order or executive-agency regulation, and the HRCA is an obstacle, because legislatively-passed law supersedes orders and regulations. At present, the governor has issued multiple executive orders mandating state, daycare, and healthcare workers either get vaccinated for COVID-19 or get tested weekly for it [*11]. The Governor would prefer to be rid of this testing annoyance and force everyone to get the vaccine. Hence, the HRCA had to go.
This would still leave Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a) [*12] (as states can't, under current court interpretation, legally nullify federal law), which still makes it illegal for employers of, presently, fifteen or more employees to compel COVID-19 vaccination to those with religious exemptions. But, that law only allows for "reasonable accommodations" for people who can't hold true to their faith while doing what an employer demands.
This leaves wiggle-room for employers to argue that weekly-testing and masking are not good enough, that, while religious exemptions are recognized, the job for the employees is impossible to do without a COVID-19 vaccine (and, of course, the subsequent boosters coming). Think of a job that requires unloading freight only on Sundays. A man might have a sincerely-held religious belief against working on Sundays, but, if the employer can't find work for him outside of Sunday, the employer can discharge the employee or refuse to hire him. In other words, an employer can say: "No COVID-19 vaccine? Sorry, but we simply can't accommodate you with any work we have!"
The HRCA, however, does not have a "reasonable accommodation" exception, which is why it is so dangerous to the branch-covidian agenda.
Normally, a change in the law only takes effect at the next legislative cycle in Illinois, which, for bills signed by the Governor in November 2021, would be in June of 2022. Laws can never work retroactively, because Article 1, Sections 9 (for federal) and 10 (for state) of the U.S. Constitution prohibit ex-post-facto laws; so it's impossible to change a law after people have already experienced an incident where that law applied to them or used that law in cases they've filed. Illinois even allows a little extra breathing space between a law being signed and it taking effect in order to give people time to prepare for the change.
If the Illinois legislature merely voted to add a COVID-19-healthcare-related exception to the HRCA, all the lawsuits currently being brought would still be valid, and a flood of litigation would occur through June 2022. Success in that litigation might shift the tide of public opinion. People will hear of friends and family having great success with a law that they know their legislators voted against. Perhaps people that were in favor of vaccine mandates will begin to change their mind, once they hear of all these people winning court challenges. The Illinois Democrats need to mitigate that effect. But how?
SB1169 states:
As a principle of what is referred to in legalese as statutory construction, when a judge interprets a law, he first looks at the plain meaning of the text before him. If the text gives a clear meaning, then the judge applies that clear meaning to the case before him. If the text is ambiguous, then judge looks to the legislative history, the record of debate on passage of the law, and uses that as a guide to decipher the original intent of the legislature when the law was passed. This is a function of the judicial branch, not the legislative one. A legislature can enact new laws, but it can't violate the U.S. Constitution's prohibition on ex-post-facto laws by "clarifying the intent" of the legislature who passed a law twenty-three years ago.
Imagine a law outlawing homicide, making no exceptions outside of self-defense. Twenty-two years later, a wave of homicides against a particular ethnic group ensues. A new legislature then passes a law clarifying the intent of the original law, stating that the legislature never intended for laws against homicide to apply to the particular ethnic group being slain. Let's say the legislative record of debate on the original homicide law is filled with pejorative comments about the particular ethnic group and even includes a statement by each assemblyman along the lines of: "No way should this law apply to [insert pejorative term for hypothetical ethnic group]." If a judge wants to use the legislative history to clarify the intent of the law on homicide as to not apply to that particular ethnic group, he can't refer to post-facto opinions by a new legislature. He can only use the record from the original legislature twenty-two years ago.
Relating back to SB1169, will courts apply the bill to all instances of COVID-19-vaccine discrimination after the Governor signs it or after June 2022? As Thomas Devore, the Illinois attorney who won that state-court TRO, opines [*13], the efforts of Illinois Democrats to pretend they are clarifying intent instead of changing the HRCA may be interpreted by future courts as leaving the HRCA alone, a legislative nullity.
Recall the language: "This Section is a declaration of existing law and shall not be construed as a new enactment." A well-established principle of statutory construction (different from constitutional law [*14]) is that, even if a law is ambiguous, the judge only looks to the legislative record at the time to clarify intent and can't look to opinions from twenty-three years after passage on what the law meant. Thus, SB1169 can't legally be a "declaration of existing law" without also being a "new enactment." Because the SB1169 says it "shall not be construed as a new enactment," a sort of Shroendinger's Cat paradox is created, as SB1169 is both a law and not a law at the same time!
If SB1169 "shall not be construed as a new enactment" and post-legal "clarifications" of a statute are both unconstitutional (per U.S. Const. Art. 1, § 10) and a violation of statutory-construction law, then SB1169 is simply an unconstitutional, meaningless law, a legal nullity.
Thus if the language of SB1169 remains as is, the HRCA will likely remain unchanged. At worst, a judge will try and "save" SB1169 by interpreting the law as a change (even though the law says it isn't) and allow it to be deemed to have gone into effect June 2022. I suppose, if a talking chicken says he's a duck, you can either declare his words nonsense and ignore him, or, you could declare him a chicken.
By the time these issues work their way into the chambers of judges writing opinions, I predict the mistake of approving and mandating COVID-19 vaccines via devastating adverse-effects will become so impossible to ignore (e.g., as of October 22, 2021, 17,000+ deaths and 26,000+ permanent disabilities [*15]) that judges will interpret SB1169 (assuming its current language) as a legal nullity to erase the criminal culpability Illinois Democrats had in the killing of their own constituents.
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FOOTNOTES
[*1] https://trackbill.com/bill/illinois-senate-bill-1169-right-of-conscience-covid-19/2050782/
[*2] https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs3.asp?ActID=2082
[*3] https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs3.asp?ActID=368
[*4] https://illinoisfamily.org/politics/judge-rules-all-of-illinois-free-from-governor-j-b-pritzkers-unlawful-executive-orders/
[*5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuP2wvTAj0E
[*6] https://stratagemsoftheright.blogspot.com/2021/06/false-efficacy-difference-between.html
For example, the chief medical officer at Moderna, Tal Zaks, excuses neglect on testing for human-to-human transmission: “Our trial will not demonstrate prevention of transmission, because in order to do that you have to swab people twice a week for very long periods, and that becomes operationally untenable.”
[*7] https://stratagemsoftheright.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-broken-thumb-heuristics-in-fall-of.html
[*8] https://stratagemsoftheright.blogspot.com/2021/10/what-you-should-know-before-opposing-us.html
[*9] https://edgarcountywatchdogs.com/2021/10/the-restraining-order-against-quincy-physicians-and-surgeons-clinic/
[*10] https://www.lc.org/newsroom/details/102921-court-issues-restraining-order-against-il-hospital-over-vaccine-mandate
[*11] https://coronavirus.illinois.gov/resources/executive-orders.html
[*12] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2000e-2
[*13] https://www.facebook.com/100000129683794/videos/628782071475857/
[*14] For the law nerds, constitutional law is treated differently from statutory law, as concepts like "due process" in constitutions can have a wide number of interpretations where liberal judges use current opinions of their favored authorities to argue the meaning of words in a constitution change over time, as constitutions are "living documents" that can be reinterpreted. Statutes, however, are a bit different, and, currently, the law of statutory construction views post-legislative interpretations as antithetical to democacy. In other words, the people's representatives should vote on changes in a way they're not required to vote on changes to a constitution. This all begs some questions. Is a court using a "living document" theory to change laws in a constitution (state or federal) violating the U.S. Constitution's prohibitions on ex-post-facto laws (U.S. Const. Art. 1, §§ 9 and 10) by changing the prior-understood meanings of the U.S. Constitution ex-post-facto? If Article 1, Section 9, only applies to laws by Congress and not the language of the U.S. Constitution itself, does that mean ex-post-facto executive orders or regulations are constitutional? Section 10 of Article 1 applies to state laws; so does a court's reimagining of a state's constitution by evolving the meaning of the language amount to an ex-post-facto law? If you find this all a little perplexing, you're not alone.
[*15] https://stratagemsoftheright.blogspot.com/2021/05/covid-19-not-vaccines-represent-41-of.html
Meanwhile, the Illinois gubernatorial election won't take place until November 2022. Since Illinois is ruled by Democrats and Democrats are the du-jour party for this branch-covidian rule, the legislative assembly remains quiet while Pritzker takes all the heat, under the assumption that, by November 2022, Illinoisans might forget the pain he caused people with his policies or, perhaps, the media would have enough time to brainwash Illinoisans, by then, to see Emperor Pritzker as a benevolent ruler who made hard choices and is worthy of praise (as Facebook constantly enjoys reminding me).This kind of chicanery is exactly how modern democracy works. In the U.S., ever since the 1930s, the trend has been for legislatures to delegate all rule-making authority to the executive branches (i.e. presidents and governors). Thus, any rules related to health, safety, the environment, and much, much more are no longer voted on by our legislatures, which primarily vote on appropriating funds. All the real power has been in the hands of our presidents and governors for decades, or, more acutely, the regulatory bodies the governors and presidents defer to.
This power culminated in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) "voting" to authorize an experimental "vaccine" for use in children to become human shields of transmission for COVID-19 (even though testing for human-to-human transmission was explicitly excluded from the COVID-19 vaccine trials [*6]) that schools will certainly mandate children take. This way, if a giant wave of myocarditis (heart inflammation), a commonly-known side-effect to COVID-19 "vaccination," especially for young men, disables large swaths of the young, Congress and the President can blame the FDA as they plead for your votes.
The Purpose of SB1169
Regulations and executive decree only go so far, as legislatively-passed laws always supersede executive orders. Only when the legislatively-passed law is ambiguous or silent on a matter can an executive order or regulation control its subjects' behavior on that matter through the force of law.
As I've stated on this blog since January 2021 [*7], the real purpose for the "pandemic" is to enact a system of seasonal freedom granted upon proof of seasonal vaccination. All the initiatives on masking and lockdowns were the stick; the carrot has always been giving you back your freedom. The endgame is a system where everyone gets vaccinated and, more importantly, is revaccinated semi-annually. The optimistic scenario points to greed for the motive, as a recurring-market model worth trillions of dollars is at stake as this is applied globally, but I don't discount the possibility an even-more sinister plan is in play that we don't yet fully comprehend.
If elections truly mattered, governors and our fake president wouldn't have the political will to aggravate so many of their subjects with vaccine mandates. As such, it's only important to get just enough voter support to grant enough cover to fake elections going forward with some semblance of legitimacy. Due to the unpopularity of COVID-19-related mitigation measures, as much power as possible must be enshrined in the Illinois executive and its regulators as opposed to its voted-upon legislators. This way, the political damage shared among Democrats can be minimized.
The HRCA, however, is a substantial obstacle to the goal of seasonal re-vaccination in exchange for seasonal freedom. For more information, I link my analysis of the the HRCA and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act's application to religious exemptions to COVID-19 vaccines here [*8]. Suffice to say, the HRCA is the most powerful law in the U.S. for protecting conscientious objectors to any healthcare.
The HRCA, at section 5, makes it illegal for employers to discriminate against (let alone fire) employees who have a conscientious objection to employer-mandated healthcare:
Discrimination. It shall be unlawful for any person, public or private institution, or public official to discriminate against any person in any manner, including but not limited to, licensing, hiring, promotion, transfer, staff appointment, hospital, managed care entity, or any other privileges, because of such person's conscientious refusal to receive, obtain, accept, perform, assist, counsel, suggest, recommend, refer or participate in any way in any particular form of health care services contrary to his or her conscience [emphasis added].
Discrimination by employers or institutions. It shall be unlawful for any public or private employer, entity, agency, institution, official or person, including but not limited to, a medical, nursing or other medical training institution, to deny admission because of, to place any reference in its application form concerning, to orally question about, to impose any burdens in terms or conditions of employment on, or to otherwise discriminate against, any applicant, in terms of employment, admission to or participation in any programs for which the applicant is eligible, or to discriminate in relation thereto, in any other manner, on account of the applicant's refusal to receive, obtain, accept, perform, counsel, suggest, recommend, refer, assist or participate in any way in any forms of health care services contrary to his or her conscience [emphasis added].Section 12 outlines triple damages and attorney's fees a person who's rights are violated is entitled to:
Actions; damages. Any person, association, corporation, entity or health care facility injured by any public or private person, association, agency, entity or corporation by reason of any action prohibited by this Act may commence a suit therefor, and shall recover threefold the actual damages, including pain and suffering, sustained by such person, association, corporation, entity or health care facility, the costs of the suit and reasonable attorney’s fees; but in no case shall recovery be less than $2,500 for each violation in addition to costs of the suit and reasonable attorney’s fees. These damage remedies shall be cumulative, and not exclusive of other remedies afforded under any other state or federal law [emphasis added].
… a sincerely held set of moral convictions arising from belief in and relation to God, or which, though not so derived, arises from a place in the life of its possessor parallel to that filled by God among adherents to religious faiths;At section 3(a), “health care" is defined broadly:
… any phase of patient care, including but not limited to, testing; diagnosis; prognosis; ancillary research; instructions; family planning, counselling, referrals, or any other advice in connection with the use or procurement of contraceptives and sterilization or abortion procedures; medication; or surgery or other care or treatment rendered by a physician or physicians, nurses, paraprofessionals or health care facility, intended for the physical, emotional, and mental well-being of persons;The phrase "in connection with the use or procurement of contraceptives and sterilization or abortion procedures" is separated by semicolons that go on to discuss other health care. Illinois Democrats ignore these semicolons and argue the intent of the bill was to only apply to abortion-related healthcare, as the prior-referenced language hints at.
But, the introductory language of this bill makes that argument untenable. Section 2 defines the "legislative intent" of the law:
Findings and policy. The General Assembly finds and declares that people and organizations hold different beliefs about whether certain health care services are morally acceptable. It is the public policy of the State of Illinois to respect and protect the right of conscience of all persons who refuse to obtain, receive or accept, or who are engaged in, the delivery of, arrangement for, or payment of health care services and medical care whether acting individually, corporately, or in association with other persons; and to prohibit all forms of discrimination, disqualification, coercion, disability or imposition of liability upon such persons or entities by reason of their refusing to act contrary to their conscience or conscientious convictions in refusing to obtain, receive, accept, deliver, pay for, or arrange for the payment of health care services and medical care.
The Plaintiffs have shown there is a fair question and clear right that is in need protection, namely their respective rights to refuse and be free from compulsory vaccination for the COVID-19 virus and/or mandatory testing for the presence of the COVID-19 virus as a condition for continued employment and in the exercise of their normal and typical employment functions. Those rights to refuse to obtain or accept health care services related to COVID-19 are clearly articulated and enshrined in Illinois law and policy as plainly set forth by the Illinois General Assembly in the Health Care Right of Conscience Act. 745 ILCS 70/1 et seq. …The Plaintiffs have shown that their only adequate remedy for retention of their respective employment, livelihood and profession is through issuance of a temporary restraining order. The possibility of monetary damages as provided in section 12 of the Health Care Right of Conscience Act is inadequate to address the Plaintiffs’ statutorily preserved right to exercise their respective decisions of conscience regarding their own personal health care choices [emphasis added].
As a practicing attorney, I've helped clients keep their jobs by citing the HRCA in my demand letters to employers playing shenanigans with religious exemptions. It is a powerful law.
The Governor clearly wants to mandate COVID-19 vaccines by executive order or executive-agency regulation, and the HRCA is an obstacle, because legislatively-passed law supersedes orders and regulations. At present, the governor has issued multiple executive orders mandating state, daycare, and healthcare workers either get vaccinated for COVID-19 or get tested weekly for it [*11]. The Governor would prefer to be rid of this testing annoyance and force everyone to get the vaccine. Hence, the HRCA had to go.
This would still leave Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a) [*12] (as states can't, under current court interpretation, legally nullify federal law), which still makes it illegal for employers of, presently, fifteen or more employees to compel COVID-19 vaccination to those with religious exemptions. But, that law only allows for "reasonable accommodations" for people who can't hold true to their faith while doing what an employer demands.
This leaves wiggle-room for employers to argue that weekly-testing and masking are not good enough, that, while religious exemptions are recognized, the job for the employees is impossible to do without a COVID-19 vaccine (and, of course, the subsequent boosters coming). Think of a job that requires unloading freight only on Sundays. A man might have a sincerely-held religious belief against working on Sundays, but, if the employer can't find work for him outside of Sunday, the employer can discharge the employee or refuse to hire him. In other words, an employer can say: "No COVID-19 vaccine? Sorry, but we simply can't accommodate you with any work we have!"
The HRCA, however, does not have a "reasonable accommodation" exception, which is why it is so dangerous to the branch-covidian agenda.
Normally, a change in the law only takes effect at the next legislative cycle in Illinois, which, for bills signed by the Governor in November 2021, would be in June of 2022. Laws can never work retroactively, because Article 1, Sections 9 (for federal) and 10 (for state) of the U.S. Constitution prohibit ex-post-facto laws; so it's impossible to change a law after people have already experienced an incident where that law applied to them or used that law in cases they've filed. Illinois even allows a little extra breathing space between a law being signed and it taking effect in order to give people time to prepare for the change.
If the Illinois legislature merely voted to add a COVID-19-healthcare-related exception to the HRCA, all the lawsuits currently being brought would still be valid, and a flood of litigation would occur through June 2022. Success in that litigation might shift the tide of public opinion. People will hear of friends and family having great success with a law that they know their legislators voted against. Perhaps people that were in favor of vaccine mandates will begin to change their mind, once they hear of all these people winning court challenges. The Illinois Democrats need to mitigate that effect. But how?
SB1169 states:
Sec. 13.5. Violations related to COVID-19 requirements. It is not a violation of [the HRCA] for any person or public official, or for any public or private association, agency, corporation, entity, institution, or employer, to take any measures or impose any requirements, including, but not limited to, any measures or requirements that involve provision of services by a physician or health care personnel, intended to prevent contraction or transmission of COVID-19 or any pathogens that result in COVID-19 or any of its subsequent iterations. It is not a violation of this Act to enforce such measures or requirements. This Section is a declaration of existing law and shall not be construed as a new enactment. Accordingly, this Section shall apply to all actions commenced or pending on or after the effective date of this amendatory Act of the 102nd General Assembly. Nothing in this Section is intended to affect any right or remedy under federal law [emphasis added].Illinois Democrats believe they are not changing the law but clarifying the original intent of the HRCA by inferring COVID-19 was somehow known about in 1998 by then-oracles of the Illinois legislature that intended to exempt healthcare purported to remedy that particular pathogen they prophesized would come into existence twenty-two years in the future.
As a principle of what is referred to in legalese as statutory construction, when a judge interprets a law, he first looks at the plain meaning of the text before him. If the text gives a clear meaning, then the judge applies that clear meaning to the case before him. If the text is ambiguous, then judge looks to the legislative history, the record of debate on passage of the law, and uses that as a guide to decipher the original intent of the legislature when the law was passed. This is a function of the judicial branch, not the legislative one. A legislature can enact new laws, but it can't violate the U.S. Constitution's prohibition on ex-post-facto laws by "clarifying the intent" of the legislature who passed a law twenty-three years ago.
Imagine a law outlawing homicide, making no exceptions outside of self-defense. Twenty-two years later, a wave of homicides against a particular ethnic group ensues. A new legislature then passes a law clarifying the intent of the original law, stating that the legislature never intended for laws against homicide to apply to the particular ethnic group being slain. Let's say the legislative record of debate on the original homicide law is filled with pejorative comments about the particular ethnic group and even includes a statement by each assemblyman along the lines of: "No way should this law apply to [insert pejorative term for hypothetical ethnic group]." If a judge wants to use the legislative history to clarify the intent of the law on homicide as to not apply to that particular ethnic group, he can't refer to post-facto opinions by a new legislature. He can only use the record from the original legislature twenty-two years ago.
Relating back to SB1169, will courts apply the bill to all instances of COVID-19-vaccine discrimination after the Governor signs it or after June 2022? As Thomas Devore, the Illinois attorney who won that state-court TRO, opines [*13], the efforts of Illinois Democrats to pretend they are clarifying intent instead of changing the HRCA may be interpreted by future courts as leaving the HRCA alone, a legislative nullity.
Recall the language: "This Section is a declaration of existing law and shall not be construed as a new enactment." A well-established principle of statutory construction (different from constitutional law [*14]) is that, even if a law is ambiguous, the judge only looks to the legislative record at the time to clarify intent and can't look to opinions from twenty-three years after passage on what the law meant. Thus, SB1169 can't legally be a "declaration of existing law" without also being a "new enactment." Because the SB1169 says it "shall not be construed as a new enactment," a sort of Shroendinger's Cat paradox is created, as SB1169 is both a law and not a law at the same time!
If SB1169 "shall not be construed as a new enactment" and post-legal "clarifications" of a statute are both unconstitutional (per U.S. Const. Art. 1, § 10) and a violation of statutory-construction law, then SB1169 is simply an unconstitutional, meaningless law, a legal nullity.
Thus if the language of SB1169 remains as is, the HRCA will likely remain unchanged. At worst, a judge will try and "save" SB1169 by interpreting the law as a change (even though the law says it isn't) and allow it to be deemed to have gone into effect June 2022. I suppose, if a talking chicken says he's a duck, you can either declare his words nonsense and ignore him, or, you could declare him a chicken.
By the time these issues work their way into the chambers of judges writing opinions, I predict the mistake of approving and mandating COVID-19 vaccines via devastating adverse-effects will become so impossible to ignore (e.g., as of October 22, 2021, 17,000+ deaths and 26,000+ permanent disabilities [*15]) that judges will interpret SB1169 (assuming its current language) as a legal nullity to erase the criminal culpability Illinois Democrats had in the killing of their own constituents.
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FOOTNOTES
[*1] https://trackbill.com/bill/illinois-senate-bill-1169-right-of-conscience-covid-19/2050782/
[*2] https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs3.asp?ActID=2082
[*3] https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs3.asp?ActID=368
[*4] https://illinoisfamily.org/politics/judge-rules-all-of-illinois-free-from-governor-j-b-pritzkers-unlawful-executive-orders/
[*5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuP2wvTAj0E
[*6] https://stratagemsoftheright.blogspot.com/2021/06/false-efficacy-difference-between.html
For example, the chief medical officer at Moderna, Tal Zaks, excuses neglect on testing for human-to-human transmission: “Our trial will not demonstrate prevention of transmission, because in order to do that you have to swab people twice a week for very long periods, and that becomes operationally untenable.”
[*7] https://stratagemsoftheright.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-broken-thumb-heuristics-in-fall-of.html
[*8] https://stratagemsoftheright.blogspot.com/2021/10/what-you-should-know-before-opposing-us.html
[*9] https://edgarcountywatchdogs.com/2021/10/the-restraining-order-against-quincy-physicians-and-surgeons-clinic/
[*10] https://www.lc.org/newsroom/details/102921-court-issues-restraining-order-against-il-hospital-over-vaccine-mandate
[*11] https://coronavirus.illinois.gov/resources/executive-orders.html
[*12] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2000e-2
[*13] https://www.facebook.com/100000129683794/videos/628782071475857/
[*14] For the law nerds, constitutional law is treated differently from statutory law, as concepts like "due process" in constitutions can have a wide number of interpretations where liberal judges use current opinions of their favored authorities to argue the meaning of words in a constitution change over time, as constitutions are "living documents" that can be reinterpreted. Statutes, however, are a bit different, and, currently, the law of statutory construction views post-legislative interpretations as antithetical to democacy. In other words, the people's representatives should vote on changes in a way they're not required to vote on changes to a constitution. This all begs some questions. Is a court using a "living document" theory to change laws in a constitution (state or federal) violating the U.S. Constitution's prohibitions on ex-post-facto laws (U.S. Const. Art. 1, §§ 9 and 10) by changing the prior-understood meanings of the U.S. Constitution ex-post-facto? If Article 1, Section 9, only applies to laws by Congress and not the language of the U.S. Constitution itself, does that mean ex-post-facto executive orders or regulations are constitutional? Section 10 of Article 1 applies to state laws; so does a court's reimagining of a state's constitution by evolving the meaning of the language amount to an ex-post-facto law? If you find this all a little perplexing, you're not alone.
[*15] https://stratagemsoftheright.blogspot.com/2021/05/covid-19-not-vaccines-represent-41-of.html
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