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OSHA Covid Vaccine Mandate

President Biden and the Democrat party’s new plan to mandate COVID-19 vaccine has taken an administrative turn to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or commonly known as OSHA. The agency set out a new Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) earlier this month requiring all employers with 100 or more employees to either incorporate a written mandated vaccination policy, or to adopt a policy in which employees either choose to get vaccinated or subject to regular COVID-19 screening, along with a compulsory face mask requirement.

It has been an agenda for the Biden administration to get people vaccinated, and so far, each corner they’ve turned has resulted in a dead end. Just like the rest of the attempts, it seems that this one is futile as well. As a matter of law, the federal government may not impose a law mandating its citizens to take the vaccine, whereas a state may. (See previous article and Mass. v. Jacobsen). The OSHA ETS is an administrative loophole that Biden hoped to manipulate and pass through opposition; it has not.

Within days of the filed ETS, multiple lawsuits were filed challenging the order. So many of them were of the same substantive issue that the jurisdiction where the first one was to be heard was determined by numbering all the lawsuits’ jurisdictions onto ping pong balls, and then drafting thereafter. Fans of the ETS were hoping for a more progressive court, like that of the 9th Circuit, whereas oppositionists were egging on for a conservative court, like that of the 5th Circuit. The ping pong lottery chose the 6th Circuit, known to lean conservative.

The 5th circuit was quick to issue an order crushing the mandate, even though it knew that they would not be hearing it first. Subsequently, the DOJ quashed that order, but the implications of the initial decree by the 5th Circuit could influence other federal judges that are going to decide on the matter, including the probable Justices of SCOTUS. The substantive issue that will be ruled on is whether the ETS was specific enough in its requirement, or in other words, whether OSHA’s “one size fits all” approach in re “any employer with >100 employees” is permissible. Regardless of who will hear these matters, one thing is clear: the mandate’s effective date of January 4, 2022, will most likely be postponed as this matter continues to be in debate.