Gov. Ron DeSantis earned a major win Thursday, signing a "freedom package" of bills to curb COVID-19 policies and mandates.

The four bill signings come the morning after the Legislature passed them during this week's Special Session. DeSantis called the Special Session as the legislative front to combating President Joe Biden's vaccine mandates.

DeSantis frames his opposition to the vaccine mandates as a defense of personal freedoms against unconstitutional orders.

"To say it should be mandated when you can still get it, this is a personal choice, so that's what we're doing, and that's the science-based approach to say it should be a personal choice," the Governor said.

The "big enchilada" (HB 1B), as dubbed by DeSantis, would block public and private entities from mandating vaccines to combat COVID-19. Public entities also cannot require masks.

Among the bill's provisions is one granting the Department of Health — led by DeSantis' recent controversial appointee, Surgeon General Joe Ladapo — rule-making authority over COVID-19 protocols in schools. A draft rule, which will be considered during a two-hour meeting scheduled for Tuesday, allows schools to adopt requirements for students to wear masks if the schools let their children opt out. The rule also lays out the procedures schools must follow for COVID-19 positive students and for students exposed to positive COVID-19 students or staff.

The second measure (HB 3B) would protect the private health and religious records from being made public over the course of an investigation into a COVID-19 policy.

Another bill (HB 5B) asks the Governor's Office to develop a roadmap for a state workplace safety plan, a course that could lead Florida to withdraw from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. However, the state plan would need to be as strict as OSHA's requirements, and approval must go through the federal government.

The Biden administration has planned to use OSHA to implement its vaccine and testing mandate on businesses with 100 or more employees. Florida and other states have sued the federal government over that order, leading to a court order that paused the mandate from taking effect.

DeSantis sued the Biden administration hours after the federal government released the OSHA plan.

"You read this, it's 500 pages and they actually explicitly reject immunity through prior infection even though we have all this evidence," DeSantis said. "So you wonder if that's how they're doing that, what else may they be doing based off junk science or ideology, and it was not a very impressive display from OSHA."

The final bill (HB 7B) would limit the Surgeon General's emergency powers. In 2002, in the aftermath of September 11th and an anthrax scare, lawmakers granted the Surgeon General several emergency powers, including the authority to mandate vaccinations "by any means necessary." The power had never been used, but it became a target during the Special Session.

"Important for sure, but Joe Ladapo was not going to forcibly stick anybody, so don't worry about that," DeSantis said.