Appeals Court Reinstates Biden’s Vaccine Mandate Policy for Businesses
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
‘It will impose substantial, nonrecoverable compliance costs on those businesses… ‘The Law of COVID has superseded the Rule of Law, a despotic transition that was made evident when a panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals restored the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for private enterprises with 100 or more employees in a 2-1 vote Friday night.
The verdict overruled a stay from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which had affirmed a prior finding against the mandate by a three-judge federal court panel that determined Biden’s dicta had “grave statutory and constitutional issues,” calling it a “one-size-fits-all sledgehammer.”
The majority of the 6th Circuit disagreed. Businesses promptly filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, requesting that the verdict be overturned.
Companies with 100 or more employees would be required to provide vaccines, which would encompass over 90 million workers. Employees who are not completely vaccinated would be required to wear face masks and be subjected to weekly COVID-19 tests, and non-compliance might result in fines or job loss.
A major basis of the lawsuit challenging the mandate has been that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) does not have the authority in this instance to mandate vaccines or regular testing for COVID, reported Townhall. Friday’s latest ruling, however, argued that it does.
“We, therefore, take a holistic view of the language that Congress chose to include in its statutory authorization to OSHA,” the opinion by Judge Jane B. Stranch, an Obama appointee, stated.
In support of the majority opinion, Stranch opined that the “record establishes that COVID-19 has continued to spread, mutate, kill, and block the safe return of American workers to their jobs. To protect workers, OSHA can and must be able to respond to dangers as they evolve.”
And under the Law of COVID, evolve they will, as ordained by Biden’s perpetual doomsaying, most recently a day before the 6th Circuit’s ruling to uphold his decree.
“For the unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death … for themselves, their family, and the hospital they’ll soon overwhelm,” Biden warned in a briefing that mainstream media dutifully hyped, accenting the alleged rising threat of the Omicron variant.
Biden’s ominous pronouncement came on the heels of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control’s announcement that there haven’t been any known deaths or serious cases of COVID-19 in Europe due to the Omicron variant.
But disregard the notice, because the Law of COVID is the new Rule of Law. Just ask the 6th Circuit’s Stranch.
“Recognizing that the ‘old normal is not going to return,” the judge wrote, “employers and employees have sought new models for a workplace that will protect the safety and health of employees who earn their living there.
“In need of guidance on how to protect their employees from COVID-19 transmission while reopening business, employers turned to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration,” Stranch wrote, “the federal agency tasked with assuring a safe and healthful workplace.”
Strange how the businesses, which Stranch concluded were turning to OSHA for guidance on how to safely run their own workplaces, were quick to file an appeals to the Supreme Court to overturn the Law of COVID ruling and block the mandate.
Upwards of 30 business groups argued the OSHA rule, and by extension Biden’s vaccine fiat, would ”harm” thousands of businesses across industries, reported Politico.
”It will impose substantial, nonrecoverable compliance costs on those businesses,” the appeal stated.
“Those businesses,” it said, “will be faced with either incurring the costs of testing for the millions of employees who refuse to be vaccinated—and passing those costs on to consumers in the form of yet higher prices at a time of record inflation—or imposing the costs of testing upon their unvaccinated employees, who will quit en masse rather than suffer additional testing costs each week.”
The vaccine mandate is set to go into effect on Jan. 4, but its fate remains uncertain with the appeal headed to the Supreme Court. Until then, Judge Joan Larsen, a Trump appointee who wrote the 6th Circuit’s dissenting opinion, argued that a stay of the mandate should hold until a final review.
“As the Supreme Court has very recently reminded us, ‘our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends,’” Larsen wrote, citing a case of a Realtors Association versus the Department of Health and Human Services. In reaching its opinion the 6th Circuit’s majority argued that “questions of health science and policy lie beyond the judicial ken,” Larsen wrote.
“I agree,” she continued “But this case asks a legal question: whether Congress authorized the action the agency took. That question is the bread and butter of federal courts. And this case can be resolved using ordinary tools of statutory interpretation and bedrock principles of administrative law.
These tell us that petitioners are likely to succeed on the merits, so I would stay OSHA’s emergency rule pending final review.” Assuming, of course, that the “bedrock principles of administrative law” can trump the Law of COVID.
