Lake County Gazette

State Senate Minority Leader Dan McConchie, R-Hawthorne, used a Senate floor speech to take aim at Democrats who passed an amendment to Illinois' Health Care Right of Conscience Act (HCRCA) to ensure employers are not in violation of the act when they put in place rules meant to block the spread of COVID-19.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently signed Senate Bill 1169 into law, but McConchie said in his Senate Floor speech that America attracts people because of the ability to exercise your freedoms, and elect officials who share those beliefs. However, he alleged that tens of thousands of people in Illinois who opposed the amendment are not being heard. 

“Based upon the tens of thousands of people who went to the effort — seemingly extraordinary effort it can be at times — to fill out witness slips at a relatively last minute ... opposition to this bill, I think it's fair to say that we all have constituents who believe that this legislation is wrong,” he said in the speech.  

McConchie also pointed out that those people who filed witness slips opposing the amendment were under the impression that legislators would hear their collective voices.  He said those people hoped that lawmakers would listen to them, and he didn’t belief the governor’s authority should override the freedoms of the 12 million constituents he was elected to serve. 

“If we continue to ignore the wants, needs and beliefs of the people who asked for our help we are not serving those who elected us,” McConchie continued. “We are selling them out.”

McConchie urged everyone who took the time to express their opposition to the amendment to maintain their belief in government. 

“Even if not everyone here, or even most of the legislators in this chamber, appreciated, we recognized over here on this side of the aisle that the government’s primary function is to protect and enhance citizens’ liberties and freedoms, not take them away, and we will continue to vote to protect those rights,” he said.

The amendment ensures that employers, businesses and other organizations can enact measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and its variants. In a news release on his website, Pritzker claimed the amendment will ensure that vaccine requirements can continue amid the pandemic and that the HCRCA cannot be manipulated to create an unsafe working environment. . 

The amendment, signed into law Nov. 8, also stipulates that enforcing any measures as an employer, business or organization is not a violation of the HCRCA, which was originally enacted to ensure that healthcare workers did not have to provide services that go against their religious beliefs.