Texas federal Judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown of the U.S. District Court ruled against Biden’s unconstitutional vaccine mandate for federal employees on Friday.
“Because the President’s authority is not that broad, the court will enjoin the second order’s enforcement,” wrote Brown in the U.S. District Court in Galveston, Texas.
The Justice Department has since announced it would appeal the ruling.
Judge Brown argued that former vice president Joe Biden didn’t have the authority to do so “with the stroke of a pen and without input from Congress.”
“While vaccines are undoubtedly the best way to avoid serious illness from COVID-19, there is no reason to believe that the public interest cannot be served via less restrictive measures than the mandate, such as masking, social distancing, or part- or full-time remote work,” Brown wrote. “Stopping the spread of COVID-19 will not be achieved by overbroad policies like the federal-worker mandate.”
Over the past few months, the installed administration has been pushing for various unconstitutional mandates across the country facing a lot of backlash. The most recent defeat to former vice president Joe Biden was the Supreme Court blocking a mandate for private businesses with 100+ employees. Even though they did allow a mandate for healthcare workers to go into effect.
Judge Brown’s ruling on Friday is not the final say on the policy though. It’s blocking the mandate from being enforced on federal employees while litigation is pending.
The Biden administration has already filed notice that they plan on appealing the decision to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
If they don’t like that ruling they could take it to the Supreme Court.
A group called Feds For Medical Freedom is behind the case, which also challenged a vaccine mandate for federal contractors. But the judge did not rule on that mandate because it is already subject to a nationwide injunction.
The mandate would have applied to approximately 3.5 million federal employees, requiring them all to be fully vaccinated by the end of November. The Biden administration said it would counsel employees who resisted vaccination rather than terminate them.
On December 9, the Office of Management and Budget said that the federal workforce was 97.2% compliant with the mandate, a figure that includes people who had a pending or approved exemption.
Stay strong and continue to fight. And don’t forget that on January 23 there is a Defeat the Mandate rally planned for Washington, D.C.
