Senate Votes to Repeal Federal Vaccine Mandate for Businesses

Yesterday evening, the U.S. Senate voted 52-48 to repeal President Biden’s federal vaccine mandate for employers of 100 or more employees. We already filed a lawsuit on behalf of The Heritage Foundation over this unconstitutional mandate. The mandate has not been upheld in any court thus far.

ACLJ Director of Government Affairs Thann Bennett explained what happened in Washington, D.C. last night:

Last night actually was a strong indication that the mandates are also losing in the court of public opinion. Because I will tell you when these Resolutions of Disapproval come up, they are a resolution that the Congressional Review Act authorizes, and the Senate can take a vote to reject a rule that is passed by the Administration. Look, a Senator never votes against his or her President on these things. I mean almost never does it . . . because they want to show deference to the President of their party. So, the fact that Senator Tester and Senator Manchin voted with all 50 Republicans to reject this mandate and pass this Resolution of Disapproval shows just how displeased I think the American people are with the mandate. . . . The measure does now move to the House, but Speaker Pelosi does not have to call this measure up unless a handful of Democrats in her caucus sign a discharge petition and make her do it. After these two Senators voted in favor of the resolution, maybe that could happen.

ACLJ Director of Policy Harry Hutchison discussed how this mandate is failing all around:

We’ve seen a cascading series of events both in the Senate and in the courts suggesting that the Biden Administration, when it comes to this particular mandate, is acting like an emperor without clothes. If you look for instance at the OSHA mandate, President Biden himself said he lacked the authority to issue this mandate. Then, if you actually look at the statutory authority granted to OSHA, the OSHA statutory authority focuses on workplace . . . health and safety issues. So, you cannot plausibly claim that COVID-19 is primarily a workplace risk. Certainly, it is a risk in the workplace. But the risk does not generally come from the workplace. OSHA is supposed to focus on improving workplace safety. Basically, the Biden Administration was stocked with a number of court decisions from the Fifth Circuit, then the Sixth Circuit has essentially upheld the Fifth Circuit.

This mandate is likely to end up at the Supreme Court. Another case we have filed in is regarding school choice, and it was argued at the Supreme Court yesterday. In Maine, they opened up school choice, but prohibited religious schools from being included.

Justice Stephen Breyer, a liberal, even admitted it’s discrimination:

I mean, it is discriminatory against religion. But I think the Establishment Clause problem or interest underlying it forever has been “beware if the government gets too involved.” One, people will think the government favors some things as opposed to others, and that that will cause strife.

Thann Bennett explained the impact of this:

Look, the ramifications of this go way beyond education. This is a tactic in Washington, D.C. from the Left more and more, they want to exclude faith-based providers or faith-based services from all sorts of realms. In the Build Back Better act that President Biden is pushing and is being considered in the United States Senate right now, there are . . . a lot of dollars for childcare, but they say that faith-based providers cannot access those dollars. There’s one study that says when parents have a choice, more than half . . . choose to send their children to a faith-based provider. So, are you going to take that choice first of all away from parents? Second of all, when you send those dollars for childcare services – why are you going to discriminate against the faith-based provider? I would say, the education is maybe the most important . . . but the aim of the Left is to push this theory in all different realms.

The ACLJ is on these issues. We filed a lawsuit on the vaccine mandate that the Senate voted on yesterday. And we filed a brief at the Supreme Court on the school choice issue in Maine. With your support, we have been able to partake in these important battles that determine the future for America.

Today’s full Sekulow broadcast is complete with even more analysis of the federal vaccine mandate and a school choice case at the Supreme Court.

Watch the full broadcast below.

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