ACLJ Files Urgent Reply At Supreme Court Against Biden Vaccine Mandate

Even after admitting that there is "no federal solution" to fight the spread of COVID-19, President Biden continues to fight to enforce his unconstitutional vaccine mandate on American employers. 

As we’ve told you, the ACLJ is currently fighting at the Supreme Court against President Biden’s federal vaccine mandate. The Supreme Court announced that it will hear oral arguments in the case on January 7th. 

The mandate put forward by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which will go into effect on January 4, 2022, requires employers of 100 or more employees to implement a mandatory vaccination policy for all employees with limited exceptions.

We filed an Emergency Application for Stay of Agency Action Pending Judicial Review and Petition for a Writ of Certiorari Before Judgment with the Supreme Court on behalf of The Heritage Foundation over this federal power grab. 

The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, but the law will still go into effect on January 4th. The Biden Administration filed its response on December 30, and now we have just filed our reply, urging the Court to stay the vaccine mandate pending review, grant certiorari before judgment, or both.

As we note in the opening paragraph of our reply, President Biden recently conceded that "the problem should be “solved at the State level.”  

Yet, even after that admission, the Biden Administration continues to push for a federal mandate that would force employers to require their employees to get vaccinated, or else submit to regular testing, even if they work from home a majority of the time. 

Regardless of how one feels about the vaccines, this is a gross overreach and sets a dangerous precedent. As we stated in our filing, “no branch of the federal government, much less a federal agency, has ever attempted to impose a vaccine mandate.”

As our reply also notes,

No doubt, if the vaccine mandate is upheld, OSHA will assert an expansive power to address whatever health and safety challenges it desires, including

"safety challenges of today (air pollution, violent crime, obesity, a virulent flu, all manner of communicable diseases) or tomorrow (the impact of using the internet on mental health) . . . simply because most Americans who face such endemic risks also have jobs and simply because they face those same risks on the clock."  

Id. at *25 (Sutton, J., dissenting). OSHA clearly lacks any such authority.

Further, such a mandate places unnecessary  additional burdens on employers and foists undue hardship on working Americans by forcing them to dig into their own pockets to pay for tests being forced upon them: 

OSHA’s asserted injuries are inconsistent and inconclusive; the applicants’ injuries are not. The government’s assertion that it represents the public interest here (i.e. the unvaccinated) is in direct conflict with that actual interests of unvaccinated employees and ignores the other harms to them. “A reluctant or coerced vaccination cannot be undone if the Secretary changes course during the notice-and-comment process or if the proposed rule exceeds the Secretary’s authority.” Id. at *7-8; see also id. at *22 (“A vaccine injection is not temporary.”). Further, millions of unvaccinated workers with modest incomes will be required to pay a minimum of $10-15 per test each week.  OSHA’s attempt to “encourage” vaccination has “crossed the line distinguishing encouragement from coercion.”