On Friday, Tennessee Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III announced that his state, along with six others (Kentucky, Idaho, Kansas, Ohio, Oklahoma, and West Virginia), are challenging the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Slatery said in a press release:
As we anticipated, the mandate asserts an unprecedented expansion of emergency regulatory powers by a federal agency … Its scope and breadth is only exceeded by its length (about 500 pages). It also fails to consider the many steps already taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19 by individuals, employers and our state.
According to the release, the attorneys general argue that “OSHA lacks statutory and constitutional authority to issue” such a mandate and that the mandate takes authority away from sovereign states that are “enacting and enforcing” their own COVID-19 policies and protocols.
The lawsuit reads in part:
Pursuant to Fed. R. App. 15, section 6(f) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, 29 U.S.C. § 655(f), and the Administrative Procedure Act,
5 U.S.C. §§ 551–706, the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the States of Idaho, Kansas, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia (the “Petitioner States”) hereby petition the Court for review of the emergency temporary standard entitled “COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing; Emergency Temporary Standard” issued by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration…
On this date, Petitioner States are also filing a motion to stay the emergency temporary standard pending the Court’s review pursuant to Fed. R. App. 18.
And here's the lawsuit: AG Slatery
Challenges @POTUS #VaccineMandates for Private Sector Employees: https://t.co/x4vqbVApRa— TN Attorney General (@TNattygen) November 5, 2021
On Thursday, the Biden administration released a new regulation requiring all companies with 100 or more employees to mandate vaccines or weekly testing for all workers. Following the announcement, The Daily Wire filed a lawsuit against the administration.
“We’re not the enforcement arm of the federal government. Forcing Americans to choose between their livelihoods and their freedom is a grotesque abuse of power and we won’t be a party to it,” said Jeremy Boreing, co-founder and co-CEO of The Daily Wire. “We will not incur the cost of implementing this testing regime. We will not incur the liability of inserting ourselves into the private health decisions and information of our employees. Our company was founded to stand against tyranny, and we will.”
Boreing added that other companies, regardless of their political ideologies, should be assessing the potential liabilities of a mandate that would make them “discriminate against their employees on the basis of very private decisions made by those employees.”
On Saturday, an emergency stay was issued against the mandate by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which reads:
Before the court is the petitioners’ emergency motion to stay enforcement of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s November 5, 2021 Emergency Temporary Standard (the “Mandate”) pending expedited judicial review.
Because the petitions give cause to believe there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the Mandate, the Mandate is hereby STAYED pending further action by this court.