A federal court on Saturday temporarily blocked President Joe Biden from imposing his will on large swaths of the American workforce and ...
A federal court on Saturday temporarily blocked President Joe Biden from imposing his will on large swaths of the American workforce and forcing them to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
The ruling was handed down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, according to Reuters.
The court found “grave statutory and constitutional” issues with the vaccine mandate, which ordered companies with at least 100 employees to require all employees to either be vaccinated or tested weekly.
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott celebrated the ruling on Twitter.
“Emergency hearings will take place soon. We will have our day in court to strike down Biden’s unconstitutional abuse of authority,” he wrote.
Texas was joined by Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Utah in the case against the Biden administration, according to KATC-TV.
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry also praised the ruling.
“The Court’s action not only halts Biden from moving forward with his unlawful overreach, but it also commands the judicious review we sought,” Landry said in a news release. “The President will not impose medical procedures on the American people without the checks and balances afforded by the Constitution.”
Multiple Republican-led states are planning to challenge the mandate, which took the form of an emergency rule drafted by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
On Thursday, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said his state would be among those fighting the rule in court.
“Florida will be responding, and I think the rule’s going down. I just don’t think that there’s an adequate basis for it, and I think you’ve even seen people on their side acknowledge that they don’t have firm constitutional footing for this,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis suggested the so-called emergency rule is not necessitated by any emergency.
“They’re saying this is an imminent danger, it’s got to be an emergency rule. These people have been working this whole time — they’ve been working for a year and a half. They announced that they were gonna do this in September, it took them six weeks to write the rule, and it doesn’t go into effect until January?” DeSantis said.
DeSantis isn’t the only Republican governor condemning the rule.
“Not surprisingly, President Biden is plowing forward with his OSHA rule to punish America’s businesses — yet another unprecedented federal overreach into the private sector,” Idaho Gov. Brad Little said in a statement.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita called the mandate “a direct attack on states’ rights,” according to WXIN-TV. “This is a direct attack on individual liberty and freedom. And it’s a complete overreach of the federal government.”
“It’s egregious and insidious that we use something in a law that was meant to protect workers at the workplace — from dangerous toxicities and from other directly unsafe situations — to use it in this fashion to cover something that is a much bigger part of our lives.”
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson wasted few words on the rule, according to U.S. News and World Report.
“This rule is garbage,” he said. “It’s unconstitutional, and we will fight it.”
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