A handful of Republican-led states announced that they are taking Biden administration to court over his COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
NPR reports that Republican attorneys general in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio are going to court over the mandate for federal contractors, which is supposed to go into effect in January.
The contractor mandate was originally meant to take effect on December 8, but was put off for one month after defense contractors warned of “layoffs and weapons-manufacturing delays.”
Ohio’s suit calls the mandate “an unlawful executive order” and reminds the court that “our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in the pursuit of desirable ends.”
It won’t stop with those three states, either.
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NPR also says that “officials from dozens of states announced plans to file major lawsuits by Friday.”
A lawsuit that Georgia officials say they plan to file also includes South Carolina, West Virginia, Utah, Idaho, Alabama and Kansas. A suit that Missouri officials plan to file on Friday reportedly includes Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.
Republican South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson called the mandate “garbage” and added that “it’s unconstitutional and we will fight it.”
Indiana is set to unleash not one but three suits against the Biden administration. That state’s GOP governor, Eric Holcomb, echoed my own sentiments in a statement saying that although he agrees “that the vaccine is the tool that will best protect against COVID-19, this federal government approach is unprecedented and will bring about harmful, unintended consequences.”
Given how much the CDC has gotten wrong over the last 18 months, and also how politicized the agency has become, following its advice in the form of an executive mandate is both politically and constitutionally dubious.
Like most everything else the Biden White House has tried in its brief existence, the vaccine mandate is unnecessarily contentious and authoritarian.
We’ll know soon enough whether the courts agree.
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