These 5 States Have Extended Unemployment Benefits To Workers Fired Over Vaccine Mandate

The battle in the U.S. over COVID-19 vaccine mandates has paralleled the one against the virus itself. Now, five state governors are upping the ante further.

On Tuesday, The Washington Post reported governors in Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Kansas and Tennessee have extended unemployment benefits to those who lost their job for noncompliance with a COVID-19 mandate. All of these states are led by Republican legislatires and governors who have been adamantly opposed to the mandates encouraged by President Joe Biden.

Ordinarily, employees who were fired for cause, including breaking company policy, are not eligible for jobless benefits. On the other hand, states are able to set their own eligibility requirements for who can receive unemployment benefits and under what conditions they may qualify, which has left room for these five governors to extend them to the willfully unvaccinated.

Many Republican lawmakers on the state and national levels have expressed opposition to vaccine mandates. They argue that such requirements contradict personal freedom and that they hurt employers at a time of a national labor shortage.

It has been estimated that 5% of those unemployed quit their job because of a failure to comply with a vaccine mandate. Employers have attacked these states for appearing to encourage more noncompliance with mandates.

Businesses in Kansas have rallied against the decision to extend unemployment benefits to those who refuse to comply with mandates. President Alan Cobb of the Kansas Chamber of Commerce warned that the state is willing to risk "significant financial harm" to its unemployment trust fund, push up taxes and impact the state's solvency.

The decision to allow unemployment aid in this scenario also takes on a more political tone, given that Republican-led states were the first to begin cutting enhanced unemployment aid over the summer. They justified their decision to end the programs by saying continuing the unemployment programs would discourage workers from seeking employment.

Subsequent studies have found that these states have not reaped the job growth benefits they had hoped for by cutting aid early. Instead, they found that gains differed marginally from those seen in Democrat-led states that kept the benefits longer.