The Department of Justice said that it will "vigorously defend" the Biden administration's vaccine mandate for businesses, which the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was expecting to enforce starting Jan. 4 before an appeals court blocked the requirement from taking effect.
After the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday upheld a stay on the OSHA order, which would have mandated that all employers with at least 100 employees require their workers to get vaccinated or undergo weekly coronavirus testing, a DOJ spokesperson said the Biden administration would challenge the ruling.
"This decision is just the beginning of the process for review of this important OSHA standard," a spokesperson told Fox News. "The Department will continue to vigorously defend the standard and looks forward to obtaining a definitive resolution following consolidation of all of the pending cases for further review."
The appeals court granted an emergency stay on the OSHA orders last week, temporarily freezing them and thus, preventing them from going into effect.
The Biden administration then argued that the court’s ruling could result in the loss of "dozens or even hundreds of lives per day."
"With the reopening of workplaces and the emergence of the highly transmissible Delta variant, the threat to workers is ongoing and overwhelming," the administration's lawyers argued in court filings.
However, Judge Kurt Engelhardt pointed out that the stay was in the best interest of the public, citing economic uncertainty and opposition to a sweeping vaccine mandate.
"The public interest is also served by maintaining our constitutional structure and maintaining the liberty of individuals to make intensely personal decisions according to their own convictions - even, or perhaps particularly, when those decisions frustrate government officials," he wrote.
At least 27 states have filed legal challenges in at least six federal appeals courts following the release of OSHA's rules on Nov. 4, which came after President Joe Biden announced plans to implement the vaccine mandate back in September through an executive order.
When announcing his order, the president expressed frustration with those who remain unvaccinated, saying that "our patience is wearing thin."
According to data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, around 59 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 while 68 percent have received at least one dose.
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