No jab, no access? Is differential treatment based on vaccination (wrongfully) discriminatory?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries introduced policies that disadvantaged unvaccinated individuals, including fines, restrictions on access to public spaces, and lower healthcare priority. This article examines whether such differential treatment constitutes wrongful discrimination. Drawing on prominent philosophical accounts of discrimination, we argue that these policies qualify as direct discrimination against the unvaccinated under pandemic conditions, because vaccination status became socially salient in this context. Additionally, it is argued that the policies may constitute indirect discrimination when vaccine hesitancy strongly correlates with socioeconomic and racial disparities. The article then assesses whether the policies constitute wrongful discrimination on prominent accounts of this. We argue that, even though the policies did make unvaccinated individuals worse off and may potentially express demeaningness, mitigating factors such as personal responsibility or respect for individual autonomy were also present. As a result, these policies can only be considered as direct discrimination under some accounts of the wrongness of discrimination, but not under others. In contrast, concerns about indirect discrimination are more justified, at least when the group of the unvaccinated overlaps with the individuals affected by socioeconomic and racial disparities.