“The Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal employees will remain blocked until at least September after a federal appeals court on Monday agreed to reconsider its previous decision to reinstate the mandate,” The Defender reported.
A U.S. appeals court panel said it would convene a full panel to reconsider President Joe Biden's executive order requiring civilian federal employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19, and set aside the order pending that hearing https://t.co/O6brj1y82s pic.twitter.com/3Kc7YHz0M6
— Reuters Legal (@ReutersLegal) June 27, 2022
Good news! The 5th circuit blocked the Biden Administration's vax mandate for federal workers pending full en banc hearing. The covid vax mandates has fueled generalized vaccine skepticism and is a black mark on public health. https://t.co/DfymCnZFTS
— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) June 27, 2022
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans will revisit its April ruling by a three-judge panel that the administration has the legal authority to require federal employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19, The Associated Press reported.
The new order from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans vacates an earlier ruling by a three-judge panel that upheld the mandate. The new order means a block on the mandate imposed in January by a Texas-based federal judge remains in effect, while the full court’s 17 judges take up the appeal.
Biden had issued an order Sept. 9 requiring that more than 3.5 million federal executive branch workers undergo vaccination, with no option to get regularly tested instead, unless they secured approved medical or religious exemptions.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, who was appointed to the District Court for the Southern District of Texas by then-President Donald Trump, issued a nationwide injunction against the requirement in January. At the time, the White House said 98% of federal workers were already vaccinated.
The Defender added:
Biden introduced Executive Order 14043 in September 2021, requiring more than 3.5 million federal executive branch workers to undergo vaccination unless they secured approved medical or religious exemptions. The order did not allow workers to choose regular testing in place of getting the vaccine.
In December 2021, Feds for Medical Freedom — a grassroots organization with about 6,000 members throughout the federal civil service — sued the Biden administration and several federal agencies.
Other parties to the lawsuit included the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 918, a union representing employees in the Federal Protective Service and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and several other individuals and federal contractors.
The groups sought to block two COVID-19 vaccine mandates: one covering federal employees and the other for federal contractors.
Lawyers representing the Biden administration argued the Constitution gives the president, as the head of the federal workforce, the same authority as the CEO of a private corporation, and that therefore mandating vaccination was under the president’s authority.
The plaintiffs disagreed, countering that such action oversteps a president’s powers.
“The main thrust of the argument [of the plaintiffs],” attorney Bruce Castor Jr. told The Epoch Times in February, “is that the president doesn’t have the authority to issue an order like this, pursuant to the powers granted him in Article Two of the United States Constitution, and that’s the same argument that won the day in the Supreme Court regarding the 100 or more employees; the president doesn’t have that authority.”
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown stated in his 20-page ruling that the president and his administration did not have the authority to impose such a mandate.
Brown questioned the president’s power to mandate federal employees undergo a medical procedure as a condition of their employment, writing in his decision:
“This case is not about whether folks should get vaccinated against COVID-19 — the court believes they should. It is not even about the federal government’s power, exercised properly, to mandate vaccination of its employees.
“It is instead about whether the president can, with the stroke of a pen and without the input of Congress, require millions of federal employees to undergo a medical procedure as a condition of their employment.
“That, under the current state of the law as just recently expressed by the Supreme Court, is a bridge too far.”
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