CLACKAMAS COUNTY, Ore. — Officials in Clackamas County plan to talk about a ban on vaccine passports at the 10 a.m. meeting scheduled for Tuesday, June 1.
As it stands, Oregon is the only state in the country that is requiring vaccine passports or the verification of vaccine status to allow the removal of masks indoors. It is a controversial action that has already caused a stir. Ten business associations signed a letter to the Biden administration calling the passport policy “alarming” and a conservative group has threatened to sue Gov. Kate Brown if she doesn’t repeal the policy.
It’s not surprising that a county might want to pass their own legislation on the policy but the language in the draft of the ordinance to be discussed on Tuesday by Clackamas County officials is.
The draft conflates the use of vaccine passports as creating “the conditions of a new Jim Crow 2.0.”
Jim Crow laws were segregation laws, deemed constitutional in 1896 in the Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson, that mandated separation between Black people and white people. The legal ramifications of being Black in a white space were anything from fines to jail. However, the social implications could be as severe as lynching. Plessy v. Ferguson was overturned in 1954 by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education which outlawed racial segregation in education by stating that separate learning environments were inherently not equal.
The ramifications of not being vaccinated or not wanting to show proof of vaccination in Oregon is having to continue to wear a mask indoors.
The ordinance draft claims that vaccine passports create segregation and discrimination the same way Jim Crow laws did because some people are religiously, philosophically or medically exempt from receiving the vaccine. Those people, and all people who are not fully vaccinated, are not supposed to take their masks off indoors to protect themselves and others.
The consequences, both social and legal, of vaccine passports and Jim Crow laws are not the same.
The draft also says that vaccine passports unwillingly enroll participants into "the next generation of a ‘show me your papers’ totalitarian technocratic regime." It also mentions several times the concern that the need for a vaccine passport violates the privacy and medical privacy of individuals.
It is not a HIPAA violation to ask or give vaccination status.
This, however, is not the first time that the Clackamas County Board has had issues with COVID-19 and racism. Chair Tootie Smith took to Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Today" where she balked at Gov. Brown's plea to keep Thanksgiving gatherings intimate due to the pandemic.
She said she wanted to invite as many friends and family as she could find to her Thanksgiving gathering. On Carlson’s show, she stated, "I think our people have the intelligence, the education and the independence to make their own decisions. We are adults, we do not need to be treated as second-rate slaves in our own homes."
Then, in January, someone in Clackamas County dug up many racist and Islamophobic social media posts from newly sworn commissioner Mark Shull. There was a call for his resignation. He did not resign.
KGW reached out and asked the Board of Commissioners in Clackamas County how each member felt about the Jim Crow language in the draft of the ordinance and whether they supported the ban. We did not hear back.