Shredding President Biden’s national vaccine mandate for companies with more than 100 workers as staggeringly overbroad and an abuse of extraordinary power, a US federal appeals court has again ruled against the policy on Friday.
After granting an emergency stay last Saturday of the requirement by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) that those workers be vaccinated by Jan. 4 or face mask requirements and weekly tests, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stark rebuke on the jab mandate on Friday.
Judge Kurt Engelhardt stated that OSHA, the federal agency tapped to enforce the mandate, was not created to “make sweeping pronouncements on public health matters affecting every member of society in the profoundest of ways.”
He went on saying that although OSHA has the power to issue ETS – emergency temporary standard – such orders constitute “extraordinary power” which must be exercised delicately and only in emergency situations which require it.
Engelhardt noted that the mandate almost completely fails to address, or even respond to, the reality and common sense by not taking into account the workplaces’ diversity or the fact that Covid-19 is more dangerous to some employees than to others.
Addressing the response that Justice and Labor departments’ lawyers filed on Monday saying that stopping the mandate would only prolong the COVID pandemic and increase the number of lives affected, Judge Engelhardt write that the stay is firmly in the public interest.
OSHA issued this month an emergency order to enforce the mandate after the Biden administration initially announced it in September.
After a litany of plaintiffs challenging the move, including a number of companies and several US states, the appeals court issued its first stay on November 6 and the expedited judicial review it conducted reaffirmed the pause and ordered OSHA no to implement or enforce it until further court order.
However, the White House has continued to urge companies to implement the mandate despite the stay, potentially setting up a battle in the Supreme Court.
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