Horowitz: Tennessee lawmakers introduce bill to prevent businesses from discriminating against customers without masks

In our society, businesses are sued for not looking at customers the right way or for not taking expensive actions to accommodate the needs of employees and customers through OSHA, ADA regulations, and anti-discrimination laws. Since when did it become OK, then, for businesses to force customers and employees to take very definite actions against their bodily integrity, such as wearing face masks, no matter their personal conditions? A group of conservatives are pushing a bill in the Tennessee legislature to address this problem, and it just might become a model for other states.

Tennessee is one of 12 states that currently does not criminalize breathing without a Chinese face burka, but the damage done by the local and federal mandates has made businesses feel as if they need to enforce it to cover their backs. Despite no statewide mask mandate and overall fewer restrictions than other states, RINO Gov. Bill Lee he has still declared going to church in person dangerous and tried to dictate to Tennesseans how many people with whom they could gather. He has also enabled and empowered localized health board tyranny instead of individual liberty, and even put out a video promoting face masks. Thus, like in every other state, Tennessee businesses are enforcing this mask tyranny on the citizenry.

A group of Tennessee lawmakers have introduced the Medical Non-Discrimination Business and Consumer Act (SB 0320/ HB 0794) to ensure that businesses are not enforcing what government is clearly incapable of doing. It is also designed to place anti-discrimination and disability laws vis-à-vis mask-wearing in line with every other practice of business regulation that prevents even private businesses from wholesale discrimination, invasion of medical privacy, and violation of the ADA.

Specifically, this bill would prohibit a person from denying an individual the full and equal enjoyment of goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of a place of public accommodation, resort, or amusement on the grounds of the wearing or use of a medical device, or whether the individual has received medical treatment, such as a vaccine.

On a practical level, this bill would prevent grocery stores, restaurants, movie theaters, and gyms from requiring masks or proof of vaccination in order to receive services. This is in line with current anti-discrimination law as it relates to every other facet of society. Just a year ago businesses would have been shut down for the rampant and cruel discrimination they are engaging in today.

Pursuant to the ADA (36.201), no individual shall be discriminated against on the basis of disability in the full and equal enjoyment of goods and services, without retaliation or coercion (36.206) covering any condition whether a physical or mental impairment (36.302.1) wherein mere presence does not constitute direct threat, even if contagious or noncontagious with transmissible diseases (36.302.b.2, 36.208).

Universal masking within businesses is unattainable because it does not address the chaos variable of the many who have an ADA right to reasonable accommodation to receive full access to goods and services, and you do not get to know what is wrong with them. Exemptions include PSTD from trauma, rape, and bound torture, autism, cancer, COPD, asthma, lung disease, pregnancy, and exposure/illness. Yet masking is the one thing that can violate anti-discrimination and disability laws, despite the fact that masks are worthless in combatting a respiratory virus.

Thus, this bill would merely place mask policies in line with every other ADA and anti-discrimination regulation we enforce on businesses today. It takes away the liability that businesses would potentially incur for allowing people to come in without a mask. It further prohibits local governments within the state of Tennessee from enforcing such mandates, a step Gov. Lee has failed to take until now.

The Senate bill is sponsored by Sen. Joey Hensley, and the House bill is sponsored by Rep. Susan Lynn. The bill is being promoted statewide by Tennessee Stands, a grassroots organization promoting a more rational approach to the virus.

Are you sick of the left regulating businesses into oblivion, then suddenly empowering them to enforce the ultimate form of discrimination when it comes to their sacred masks? If a mom-and-pop bakery must bake a cake for a gay wedding when the couple can find one hundred other businesses willing to service their event, then certainly businesses can't shut off all vital goods and services to a human being for merely breathing, especially when there is no evidence they even have the virus. Moreover, if "businesses can do whatever they want," then businesses can open without capacity restrictions or other lockdown policies. It's time to apply anti-discrimination law and business regulations as a two-way street.

Let's be clear, unless this legislation is passed in all the 31 states with GOP-controlled legislatures, the mask cult will never end. It's time to even up the score and push back against government tyranny with equal and opposing force. The Medical Non-Discrimination Business and Consumer Act is that opposing force we've been waiting for.