Last month, Birmingham-Southern College reportedly determined it would charge unvaccinated students a $500 fee “to offset continual weekly antigen testing and quarantining.”
The call by the private four-year college was criticized by lawmakers, who saw it as a violation of Alabama’s vaccine passport prohibition passed by the legislature and signed into law by Gov. Kay Ivey.
During an appearance on this week’s broadcast of Alabama Public Television’s “Capitol Journal,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said such requirements by educational institutions, both public and private, were not “permissible” under that law.
“[I] think what we’ve seen from when we issued the guidance a couple of weeks ago when we tried to define a little bit in greater detail what the legislature actually did with that bill, most of the questions that we have gotten since then have mostly been in the education setting,” he said. “And so, what we issued this week was really a couple of things. One, different policies that have come up, and try to define those from the facts that were presented to us. For example, you can’t require vaccinations for somebody to be able to attend public schools, private schools and post-secondary education. But then there were some nuanced policies that were out there about whether or not you could charge fees that could ultimately be rebated if, in fact, you got the vaccination. We concluded in that setting that would not be permissible under the act.”
“We even dived a little bit into a question, and I think it related particularly to some of those post-secondary programs that would involve students being in hospital settings, or maybe a third-party business would compel their employees to have vaccinations, and the question was whether or not that could be required of the student for them to be able to continue with attendance,” Marshall continued. “So, you know, this has been some very challenging questions, frankly — ones that we have spent a lot of time on. And what we’ve tried to do is give the best guidance that we need to give based upon the bill the legislature passed.”
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Alabama, the editor of Breitbart TV, a columnist for Mobile’s Lagniappe Weekly, and host of Mobile’s “The Jeff Poor Show” from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. on FM Talk 106.5.
