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In what marks a sharp rebuke to the Biden administration’s runaway administrative state, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a withering opinion to an illegal vaccine mandate.
President Biden had been warned that he lacked the power to mandate vaccines for private workers. Nonetheless, the President ordered the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to do it anyway, reports the WSJ.
Mandate Not for Workplace Safety
Writing for the unanimous three-judge panel in a “withering opinion that extends the court’s earlier stay on the OSHA mandate,” Judge Kurt Engelhardtt aruges:
The Mandate’s true purpose is not to enhance workplace safety, but instead to ramp up vaccine uptake by any means necessary.
The panel also notes that OSHA itself spent nearly two months writing the rule. Two months to write the rule? A lengthy writing of the rule suggests OSHA perhaps did not perceive it a true emergency.
How to Boost Sagging Pol Numbers
As the WSJ notes, with Joe Biden’s approval numbers in early September sagging (“transitory” inflation and the Afghanistan debacle), the President ordered OSHA to “require private employers with 100 or more workers to mandate that their employees be vaccinated or tested weekly.”
At the time the mandate polled well among most Americans.
Roundly Rebuking the OSHA Mandate
The court’s opinion takes apart the OSHA mandate every which way—on constitutional, statutory and procedural grounds. The Constitution gives states, not the federal government, the police powers to regulate individual behavior to protect public health and safety.
The Administration tried to circumvent this limitation on federal power by conscripting private employers via an OSHA “emergency temporary standard.”
Biden’s Default: Coercion vs. Liberty
Typical of Joe Biden’s presidency, continues the WSJ, and among the reasons he has sunk in the polls, is the administration’s attempt to circumvent this limitation on federal power by conscripting private employers via an OSHA emergency temporary standard.
No Justifying an Illegal Order
As the mandates have become less popular, political polarization has increased. People are figuring out that the vaccines, while effective, do not prevent infection, as the public perhaps never fully grasped.
Although the Biden administration plans to continue defending the mandate, it will almost certainly lose if a challenge makes it to the Supreme Court, offers the WSJ.
Vaccines Should Be a Personal Choice
The Coved scourge has given government a political excuse to exceed its legal powers, and it’s vital that the courts rein it in for liberty’s sake.
