Montana Limits Inquiries into Immunization Status shrm.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from shrm.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Friday, May 14, 2021
On May 7, 2021, Montana governor Greg Gianforte signed into law Montana House Bill 702, under which Montana became the first jurisdiction to recognize an individual’s vaccination status as a protected category. The law also prohibits employers from requiring employees to disclose their immunization status and bars employers from requiring employees to receive certain types of vaccines or to possess an immunity passport. The law is effective immediately.
Definitions and Coverage
The law defines “vaccination status” as “an indication of whether a person has received one or more doses of a vaccine.” An “immunity passport” is “a document, digital record, or software application indicating that a person is immune to a disease, either through vaccination or infection and recovery.”
DEER LODGE â The deaths of two inmates who died in separate incidents nearly a year apart in their cells at the Montana State Prison were deemed to be suicides by a jury at the end of a pair of hearings Wednesday in Powell County District Court.
Laurence Alan Stewart, 32, was amid a sexual harassment lawsuit filed against the prison and corrections officers when he was found dead in his prison cell on April 30, 2020 in the high security area of the prison.Â
During testimony on Wednesday in the coroner s inquest into Stewart s death, detention officer Jacob Davison said staff was conducting the 6 p.m. head count in the Secure Adjustment Unit and got no response when he reached Stewart s cell. The cell door wouldn t open all the way â a knotted bed sheet was jammed in the track along the top of the door frame â but Davison could see inside that the inmate had hung more sheets up on the windows, rendering the cell pitch black. Â