The Daily Wire’s petition against the Biden administration’s order tasking private companies with policing their employees’ COVID-19 health status reached 500,000 signatures on Friday.
The petition hit the half a million benchmark about a week after The Daily Wire filed a lawsuit against the administration over the mandate, which requires all companies with at least 100 employees to ensure their employees are vaccinated or submit to regular COVID-19 testing. The order penalizes companies up to about $14,000 for every serious violation, and up to about $140,000 for a willful violation.
The Dhillon Law Group and Alliance Defending Freedom are representing The Daily Wire in the legal battle. They filed the lawsuit against the Biden administration on November 4, hours after the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) published roughly 500-pages worth of regulations and standards on Biden’s mandate.
“The Daily Wire will not comply with President Biden’s tyrannical vaccine mandate, and we are suing the Biden Administration to put a stop to their gross overreach,” Daily Wire Co-Founder and Co-CEO Jeremy Boreing said at the time. “President Biden, the federal government, social media, and the establishment media have conspired to rob Americans of their freedoms in the name of public health. They have broken faith with the American people through conflicting messaging, false information, and by suppressing data and perspectives with which they disagree.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit stayed Biden’s order on November 6 after receiving numerous petitions that “give cause to believe there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the Mandate,” according to the court.
Despite the federal court’s order, the White House has continued to push the mandate. White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday urged businesses to begin complying with the order immediately and not wait until its legal concerns are resolved.
“People should not wait,” Jean Pierre said. “We say: Do not wait to take actions that will keep your workplace safe. It is important and critical to do, and waiting to get more people vaccinated will lead to more outbreaks and sickness.”
The Daily Wire’s lawsuit alleges that the Biden administration lacks constitutional and statutory authority to issue the employer mandate, and that the mandate failed to meet the requirements for issuing a rule taking effect immediately without the normal process of considering public comments. The lawsuit takes no position on any COVID-19 vaccine or whether any person should make the personal decision to receive it or not.
In a press conference explaining The Daily Wire’s reasoning for suing the federal government, Boreing explained that corporations have a duty to fight battles and protect the rights of individuals who would struggle to do it alone.
“Corporations and states have certain responsibilities because we have the means to engage in this battle,” Boreing said. “We read story after story of individuals trying to make a stand. Of course, those individuals lose their jobs. They don’t have a way to make a stand against the government itself, so instead they make a stand against their employer and they suffer for it. Only the corporations themselves and the states, I think, can take an action that has the sort of collective power necessary to make a change.”