Before even two days had passed after the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued COVID-19 vaccination requirements Thursday, a federal appeals court temporarily blocked the Biden administration’s new rules, CNN and other media outlets reported.
A three-judge panel on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals said that the petitioners “give cause to believe there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the mandate.” According to CNN, the appeals court gave the government until 5 p.m. today to respond to the case.
“The court did not specify whether its order would have nationwide effect or would only apply to the states under its jurisdiction,” CNN reported.
The OSHA mandate also faces lawsuits or promised lawsuits from 26 GOP-led states as of Friday, according to media reports.
One lawsuit was filed by Missouri; joining in were attorneys general in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Montana, Iowa, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. Another group of states filing a lawsuit on Friday includes Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Utah. And other suit was filed by Kansas, Kentucky, Idaho, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee and West Virginia. And yet another lawsuit includes Alabama, Florida and Georgia.
In the lawsuit to which Ohio was part, states “maintain that the vaccine mandate is unconstitutional. Among their reasons? “Congress did not give the president authority to issue such a broad mandate,” Ohio Attorney General David Yost stated in Thursday’s press release.
The White House, however, likened the vaccination requirements to other safety rules mandated by the federal government.
“Vaccination rules are nothing new. We’ve been living with them throughout our lives for all sorts of diseases. Safety rules in the workplace are nothing new either,” President Joe Biden said in a press release Thursday. “We require hard hats in construction sites and safety goggles in labs. And with today’s actions, we now have requirements to protect people from something that has taken the lives of 750,000 Americans.”
