Court Halts Biden’s Federal Contractor Vaccine Mandate

The list of President Biden’s executive order Covid vaccine mandates being struck down or halted by judges is getting longer and longer. This time it’s federal contractors getting a reprieve from the onerous and likely unconstitutional requirement to be vaccinated against Covid or lose your job. This literally marks every single Biden vaccine mandate being halted by the courts, including mandates on healthcare workers through Medicare/Medicaid and mandates on private employers with more than 100 employees through OSHA.

The judge issuing the ruling listed every obvious and logical reason for why the mandate should be halted pending further litigation:

A U.S. district court in Georgia halted the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for federal contractors on Tuesday, writing that the president likely exceeded his authority.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia said the Associated Builders and Contractors, a trade group that represents the construction industry, are likely correct that President Joe Biden exceeded his authority under the Procurement Act when he issued the mandate.

“In its practical application, it operates as a regulation of public health,” District Judge R. Stan Baker wrote in the order. “It will also have a major impact on the economy at large, as it limits contractors’ and members of the workforce’s ability to perform work on federal contracts. Accordingly, it appears to have vast economic and political significance,” Baker wrote.

The court said the mandate is “costly, laborious and likely to result in a reduction in available members of the workforce.”

Once again, as we’ve mentioned many times before, the Biden administration doesn’t seem too worried or concerned that their mandates are being dismantled by the judicial system. It’s almost as if they don’t care since they knew upfront these executive order mandates would not survive the eventual legal challenges, but they would in the meantime help drive up vaccination rates. It’s a terribly dishonest and unscrupulous way to conduct business as president.

Rather than not doing something for fear that it’s unconstitutional, Biden went and ahead and did it anyway with the assumption it would be struck down later after as long as it forced millions of workers to get vaccinated for fear of losing their jobs.

As noted in the story, this is just the latest legal blow plaguing Biden’s Covid vaccine mandates:

The preliminary injunction by the court is the latest blow to the Biden administration’s efforts to push companies to make sure their employees are vaccinated, as public health officials warn about a winter surge of Covid cases and the arrival of the highly mutated omicron variant of the virus on U.S. shores.

The Biden administration was forced to halt enforcement of its vaccine and testing requirements for businesses with 100 or more employees last month. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans ordered the administration to refrain from enforcing the requirements until further notice, citing “serious constitutional concerns.”

It’s getting embarrassing at this point for anyone who supported and/or helped craft these executive orders. Either someone didn’t do their homework, or as posed above, they knew it was only a matter of time before these mandates were destroyed by any sensible judge and they didn’t really care.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbot took a victory lap on Twitter following the announcement noting that every single one of Biden’s vaccine mandate orders has been halted:

BREAKING:

A federal court in Georgia has entered a nationwide injunction against the federal-contractor vaccine mandate.  

Now ALL of the Biden Administration vaccine mandates have been halted.

Now, under my Order, vaccine mandates are not allowed in Texas.

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) December 7, 2021

For now, federal contractors, a group that comprises many, many industries, will no longer be under the gun for a Jan. 4 deadline that is fast approaching.