On Friday, a federal judge in Texas banned the Biden administration from implementing a vaccination mandate for federal employees, dealing another blow to President Joe Biden’s efforts to increase the country’s low immunization rate. Judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown described the requirement as an intrusion on presidential power, recalling a recent Supreme Court decision that overturned a second administration rule that extended to private-sector workers. “The President unquestionably has ‘extensive legislative power to oversee executive branch personnel decisions,'” Brown concluded. “However, the Supreme Court has said unequivocally that a COVID-19 vaccination obligation is not an employment regulation. As a result, the President lacked statutory power to impose the federal worker mandate.” according to CNN.
The Justice Department filed an appeal with a circuit court as soon as possible.
The government worker requirement, which applied to nearly 3.5 million employees, required full immunization by the end of November, with the administration stating that anyone who refused vaccination would be counseled first before being reprimanded or dismissed. The Office of Management and Budget stated on December 9 that the federal workforce was 97.2 percent in compliance with the rule, including those who had a pending or permitted exemption. Feds for Medical Freedom, a Nevada-based advocacy group, filed the case in December. The association has 6,000 members who work for or contract with “nearly every federal agency,” according to its website.
Brown, a former appointee of President Donald Trump, recommends people to be vaccinated. “At the outset, the court underlines that this case is not about whether or not persons should be vaccinated against COVID-19; the court believes they should,” Brown wrote. “It’s not even about the federal government’s power to require immunization of its staff when employed effectively,” he went on. “It is instead an issue of whether the President may compel millions of federal employees to undergo medical procedures as a condition of employment with the stroke of a pen and without the permission of Congress. Under the current state of the law, as recently established by the Supreme Court, that is a bridge too far.” The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, indicated that the White House
