Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) plans to appeal a ruling from a federal judge, who sided with Norwegian Cruise Line’s vaccine requirements.
The Daily Wire reports that U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams allegedly wrote that the cruise line had “demonstrated that public health will be jeopardized if it is required to suspend its vaccination requirement,” while lawyers for the state of Florida did not show any “public benefit from the continued enforcement” against the company’s proof of COVID-19 vaccination.
In a statement, Norwegian Cruise Line said that “[T]he company’s policy of 100% vaccination of guests and crew was in place without issue in every port it sails from around the world except for Florida. Despite the ongoing global pandemic and the accelerating spread of the Delta variant, Florida prohibited the company from requiring vaccine documentation which the company believed would enable it to resume sailing in the safest way possible.”
However, DeSantis’s office told The Daily Wire that they will appeal the ruling to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and that “[A] prohibition on vaccine passports does not even implicate, let alone violate, anyone’s speech rights, and it furthers the substantial, local interest of preventing discrimination among customers based on private health information.”
DeSantis signed a law in May that banned vaccine passports, which stated that a company cannot require someone to show proof of vaccination in exchange for a service without a potential $5,000 fine per violation. However, the cruise line sued the state’s surgeon general over the law.
Story cited here.
