For the second time in a week, the Biden administration has faced a legal setback regarding its vaccine mandate on private businesses with more than 100 employees. This latest decision, which came on Friday, from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, halts the private employer mandate entirely and accuses the Biden administration of greatly overstepping OSHA’s statutory authority. The result of the ruling instructs OSHA to stop all activities with regard to the implementation or enforcement of the mandate.
The court made all the obvious arguments, pointing out the financial burden it places on businesses, along with the notion that a federal mandate takes a sledgehammer to what should be more carefully approached with a scalpel:
Calling the requirement a “mandate,” the court said the rule, instituted through the Labor Department, “grossly exceeds OSHA’s statutory authority,” according to the opinion, written by Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt and joined by Judges Edith H. Jones and Stuart Kyle Duncan.
“Rather than a delicately handled scalpel, the Mandate is a one-size fits-all sledgehammer that makes hardly any attempt to account for differences in workplaces (and workers) that have more than a little bearing on workers’ varying degrees of susceptibility to the supposedly ‘grave danger’ the Mandate purports to address,” they wrote.
They said they believed that the ruling imposed a financial burden on businesses and potentially violated the commerce clause of the Constitution.
It did not take a federal appeals court to point out the burden this is causing for private businesses already tasked with the difficult job of finding seasonal employees in a tight labor market. Not to mention the fact that threats of taking a vaccination in order to keep your job violates several aspects of personal liberty and introduces a third party between an individual and their doctor, another point the court mentioned:
“The public interest is also served by maintaining our constitutional structure and maintaining the liberty of individuals to make intensely personal decisions according to their own convictions – even, or perhaps particularly, when those decisions frustrate government officials,” Engelhardt wrote.
With one swipe of a pen, President Biden removed an individual’s right to make a personal medical decision and replaced it with a requirement to accept a medical procedure if you want to keep putting food on your table. For workers who can’t or won’t take the Covid-19 vaccine for any number of reasons, the stress and burden seem to be of no concern for a president than ran on the platform of empathy.
Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General, was part of the winning side of the lawsuit which was joined by several states opposing the mandate:
White House officials had no immediate comment on the ruling, which was hailed as a victory by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Texas joined other U.S. states, as well as private employers and religious organizations, in legal challenges to the order.
“Citing Texas’s ‘compelling argument[s]’ the 5th Circuit has stayed OSHA’s unconstitutional and illegal private-business vaccine mandate”, Paxton said on Twitter.
As Paxton noted on Twitter, this win is one of the first steps along the way, but it bodes well for the argument against a federally imposed vaccine mandated being instituted by OSHA, an agency that has no statutory standing to do so:
?Citing Texas’s “compelling argument[s],” 5th Circuit has stayed OSHA’s unconstitutional & illegal private-business vaccine mandate. WE WON! Litigation will continue, but this is a massive victory for Texas & FREEDOM from Biden’s tyranny & lawlessness.https://t.co/w7MKyXs73L
— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) November 13, 2021
In the end, it may not matter if Biden’s Covid vaccine mandate is struck down in court. It may have already achieved its goal, which was to drive the vaccination rate higher using threats and fear of job loss.
This won’t be the last legal ruling on this matter, but it’s a major policy blow for Biden and a major victory for personal freedom and medical autonomy.
