24 attorneys general sent a letter to President Biden warning that litigation will follow the implementation of the proposed mandate for large employers to require their employees to either get a COVID-19 vaccine, submit to weekly testing, or be fired. The coalition of Attorney Generals outlined their legal and policy concerns with the mandate, which will be carried out through an Occupational Safety and Health Act emergency temporary standard.
Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor:
“Using a blunt tool such as OSHA’s emergency temporary standard provision to pass such an overreaching and arbitrary policy, on something as sensitive as a vaccine mandate is unreasonable as well as illegal. Due process must be provided for any policy that affects such a large swath of Americans, and it needs to be better tailored to the workplace issue being addressed. What if an employer has 100 employees that are all teleworking and the business next door has 99 employees all working in-person in close quarters? What is the rationale?”
ABC News Chief Legal Analyst Dan Abrams expects serious legal challenges:
“OSHA has typically lost these kind of cases in court and what I mean by that is these emergency orders where you have to show there’s grave danger, that it was necessary, it’s typically referring to chemicals and contaminants.”
Abrams also says:
“The federal government is on safe ground when it comes to mandating that government workers get vaccinated or hospital workers because anyone who’s getting federal funds they’ve got more control over but it’s the mandate of the larger companies where I think that there could be serious challenges here.”
Abrams says that states have the power to mandate vaccines:
“That is clear. It is also clear that OSHA can issue emergency orders but can OSHA issue this kind of emergency order? And that’s a closer case than many on both sides are suggesting here.”
Abrams states that there will be challenges from many businesses:
“The best challenges are not going to come from the governors who are making all the noise. It’s going to come from employers who are saying for whatever reason we don’t want to implement this.”
He says that there’s some serious questions about how the mandate will be enforced:
“Typically the way this would work is you would get companies to say we’re going to say in writing we definitely are adhering to this requirement, then what, then how do you enforce it at that point? I think from the government’s perspective they’re hopeful that companies will simply comply.”
CDC data shows that unvaccinated people are 10 times more likely to be hospitalized and 11 times more likely to die from the coronavirus than those who are fully vaccinated. President Biden is doubling down on vaccines, mandating that businesses with more than 100 employees either require the shots or offer weekly testing.
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