South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem intends to sue the Biden administration over sweeping COVID-19 mandates and regulations announced on Thursday.
Biden unveiled his six-point plan to combat COVID-19, which includes a vaccine mandate for all federal executive branch workers and federal contractors. The plan also directs companies with 100+ employees to either mandate vaccines or weekly COVID tests or risk fines from the Department of Labor.
“My legal team is standing by ready to file our lawsuit the minute @joebiden files his unconstitutional rule. This gross example of federal intrusion will not stand,” Noem tweeted Thursday.
My legal team is standing by ready to file our lawsuit the minute @joebiden files his unconstitutional rule. This gross example of federal intrusion will not stand.
— Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) September 9, 2021
Noem has been joined by over a dozen other governors promising to resist Biden’s executive order. The Biden administration is taking a heavy-handed approach to incentivize Americans to be vaccinated, as well as crack down on governors that have loosened up on COVID-19 restrictions and taken steps such as banning mask mandates. According to The Daily Wire:
According to the White House, Biden’s strategy “will ensure that we are using every available tool to combat COVID-19 and save even more lives in the months ahead, while also keeping schools open and safe, and protecting our economy from lockdowns and damage.”
Biden said he is “frustrated with the nearly 80 million Americans who are still not vaccinated,” appearing to repeatedly blame them for increased transmission across the country.
“The unvaccinated overcrowd our hospitals; they are overrunning emergency rooms and intensive care units, leaving no room for someone with a heart attack or pancreatitis or cancer,” he said.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis also announced Thursday that he intends to “fight” Biden’s sweeping mandates.
“How could we get to the point in the country where you would want to have someone lose their job because of their choice about the vaccine or not? I mean, look, some folks have reasons to do — maybe they’re making the wrong decision — but to put them out of work and not let them earn a living because of this, I just think that that’s fundamentally wrong,” DeSantis said, later adding: “I do not believe that people should lose their jobs over this issue, and we will fight that. If they try to do that through a rule like the Department of Labor, I don’t think they have the legal authority to do that, but we obviously would want to support protections for people who are just trying to earn a living.”
DeSantis went on to critique Biden’s plan for convincing Americans to get vaccinated, saying that education rather than mandates had better results while being less intrusive.
“The people that have had the higher vaccination rates in businesses have been ones that have had programs where they’re educating people, where they’re providing them all the information, showing some of the consequences,” DeSantis said.
“I think forcing this and coercing people, I don’t think this is the right decision. So I’d imagine that you’re going to see a lot of activity in the courts if they try to do that through an executive action, I mean, Congress has never legislated this,” the governor added.