Tipsheet

Lawsuits Are Already Coming for Biden's Vaccine Mandate

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  November 04, 2021 8:15 PM

In September, the Biden administration signaled that vaccine requirements for employers in the private sector with 100 or more employees were coming in the form of rules from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Sure enough, as Katie warned on Thursday morning, that rule has announced a January 4 deadline for these private companies to comply. In response, companies have already gone through with filing lawsuits.

The Job Creators Network (JCN), which is a small business advocacy organization, on Thursday filed a lawsuit in the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit against the administration over the mandate.

JCN has also put up billboards in Times Square calling on the president to drop his mandate. 

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who is also a medical doctor, weighed in on the lawsuit over Twitter.

Plaintiffs include small business members, including the Lawrence Transportation Company, Guy Chemical Company, The Rabine Group of Companies, Independent Bakers Association, and Terri Mitchell, who is an employee with the Guy Chemical Company. They'll be represented by Boyden Gray and Associates. 

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Alfred Ortiz, the president and CEO of JCN issued the following statement:

“The Biden Administration’s vaccine mandate is clearly illegal and will have a devastating impact on our small business community and our entire economy. JCN is suing the Administration on the grounds that OSHA does not have the authority to impose such a mandate.  Even if OSHA did have the power, there is neither the grave danger nor necessity to issue such a sweeping regulation.   

“The Administration’s mandate will exacerbate the worst labor shortage in recorded history by requiring small business owners to terminate some employees who wish not to get vaccinated while also shrinking the pool of job applicants available for hiring. Associated staffing shortages will force many of them to reduce capacity and economic output. The mandate also adds a new expense for businesses in the form of the costs associated with employee vaccination status tracking and required paid time off for employee vaccination. Employers who don’t comply will face significant financial penalties. 

“JCN recently shared these concerns in a meeting with the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs but our concerns went unheeded.  While other business groups are either seeking compromises with the Administration or are completely asleep at the switch, JCN is eager and willing to lead this fight on behalf of America’s 90-million-strong small business community.  We are going to court and we are determined to prevail.

According to the September edition of the JCN's Monthly Monitor, which polled 500 small business owners, found that, via its Small Business Intelligence Quotient (SBIQ), an index tracking overall small business optimism, declined for the second month in a row to 56.3, which it says is a record series low.

Meanwhile, the Daily Wire, represented by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and the Dhillon Law Group, Inc., is filing a lawsuit against the mandate in the the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. 

The lawsuit, according to a press release from ADF, takes no position on any COVID vaccine, or if a person should make the decision to take it. The Daily Wire has employees who have received the vaccine and those who have not. 

The press release also explains that:

As the motion for stay to be filed with the 6th Circuit will argue, the federal government has no power under the Constitution to force half the U.S. private sector workforce—80 million workers or more—to be vaccinated against their will or endure repeated medical testing as a condition of simply earning a living. Nor is OSHA empowered to compel employers to enforce this government diktat or face punishing fines. Yet the OSHA mandate would do just that. Even if it had such power, Congress did not delegate it to OSHA, which is overtly trying to ram this unconstitutional, extra-statutory, and unprecedented mandate into immediate effect through emergency rulemaking to avoid public comment in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.

The tone deaf White House continues to be preoccupied with how vaccine mandates are "a success," as it latches onto its handling of the pandemic while catastrophes after catastrophe affects the country and thus drives the president down in the polls.

These vaccine mandates may no longer be a good narrative for the White House, however. As Guy highlighted on Wednesday, an NBC poll released on Sunday found that 47 percent approve of vaccine mandates, while 50 percent disapprove.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) took to the Senate floor this week, as he has done for several weeks now, to protest the vaccine mandate. He is also introducing legislation against the mandate. The "No Forced Vaccination for COVID-19 Act," for instance, would prevent federal vaccine mandates from taking effect without approval from Congress.

Throughout Thursday, "OSHA" and "#DoNotComply" were trending on Twitter as a result of the mandate.