It has recently been reported that U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh has asked the Biden administration to respond to appeals against a vaccine-or-testing mandate for businesses with 100 or more employees.
Kavanaugh oversees appeals from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. That court recently decided that the administration’s employer mandate could take effect, leading to a slew of appeals to the Supreme Court.
Those challenging the ban want the Court to pause the Sixth Circuit’s decision and Kavanaugh sought a response from the White House by 4 p.m. E.T. on December 30.
The Supreme Court is not considering the validity of the mandate itself, which is still set to be argued before the lower court.
However, the challengers have asked the Court to fast-track a review of the mandate before the Sixth Circuit’s decision.
Last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit blocked the implementation of the mandate. However, because of the large number of challenges to the mandate, the Department of Justice asked that they be consolidated before a single court.
The Sixth Circuit was chosen by random selection and on December 17, that court reversed the Fifth Circuit’s pause on implementing the mandate.
The mandate requires workers at all businesses with 100 or more employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or receive weekly tests.
The requirement was issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) under emergency authority granted to it by Congress, which welcomed the ruling on Friday and said it would not begin issuing citations to businesses who fail to implement the mandate until January 10.
The appeals against the mandate are being taken by religious nonprofits, businesses groups and more than two dozen Republican-led states. They want to pause the mandate while litigation on the matter is ongoing.
The National Federation of Independent Businesses criticized OSHA for introducing the requirement using its emergency powers in its brief to the Court, calling it an attempt “to use brute regulatory power to impel vaccination of millions of Americans.”
The Buckeye Institute, a free-market public policy think tank, argued that the Biden administration is “frustrated with a minority of Americans’ medical choices” and was trying “to control and surveil the vaccination schedules of enormous swaths of the country’s population.”
