When President Joe Biden issued a mandate in September forcing every company with more than 100 employees to require workers be vaccinated for Wuhan coronavirus, millions of truckers threatened to quit. The American Trucking Association has sued.
"To be very clear, ATA and its member companies support efforts to encourage all Americans to get vaccinated against COVID-19 – our trucks and drivers have been on the front line in fighting this pandemic since the beginning, moving personal protective equipment, test kits, the vaccine itself and much more as the country locked down, but we believe that the Biden Administration has overstepped its statutory authority in issuing this Emergency Temporary Standard,” ATA President and CEO Chris Spear said in November. “This standard arbitrarily picks winners and losers, and puts employers in an untenable position of forcing workers to choose between working and their private medical decisions, which is something that cannot be allowed."
“We told the administration that this mandate, given the nature of our industry and makeup of our workforce, could have devastating impacts on the supply chain and the economy and they have, unfortunately, chosen to move forward despite those warnings,” Spear continued. “So we are now, regrettably, forced to seek to have this mandate overturned in court.”
Now, with the supply chain still backed up, Biden is refusing to relent and continues to claim his mandate won't impact the trucking industry.
"I say no," Biden said this week when asked about repealing the mandate and whether it would cause additional supply chain issues.
Meanwhile, the constitutionality of Biden's vaccine mandate will be heard in front of the Supreme Court on January 7, 2022 after lower courts came to different conclusions about whether it can be implemented or enforced.
In an unexpected move, SCOTUS on Wednesday night scheduled oral arguments for Jan. 7 in a pair of shadow-docket requests involving two Biden vaccine policies: the vax-or-test mandate for large employers, and the vaccine mandate for health care facilities. https://t.co/fqjlHpGkXo
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) December 23, 2021