U.S. District Judge Blocks Biden’s Vaccine Mandate For Federal Employees

[Kamaji]

U.S. District Judge Blocks Biden’s Vaccine Mandate For Federal Employees

By Debra Heine
January 21, 2022

Afederal judge in Texas on Friday blocked the administration from enforcing Joe Biden’s executive order mandating federal employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19.

Judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown upheld a suit from federal workers who refused to comply with Biden’s Executive Order 14043—Requiring Coronavirus Disease 2019 Vaccination for Federal Employees.

“The motion is GRANTED as to Executive Order 14043. All the defendants, except the President, are thus enjoined from implementing or enforcing Executive Order 14043 until this case is resolved on the merits,” Brown said.

In his decision, the judge wrote that Biden’s executive order “amounts to a presidential mandate that all federal employees consent to vaccination against COVID-19 or lose their jobs.”

Judge Brown said that Biden’s executive order could “require millions of federal employees to undergo a medical procedure as a condition of their employment. That, under the current state of the law as just recently expressed by the Supreme Court, is a bridge too far.”

Brown is a District Judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

“Because the President’s authority is not that broad, the court will enjoin the second order’s enforcement,”  he wrote.

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Source:  https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/21/u-s-district-judge-blocks-bidens-vaccine-mandate-for-federal-employees/

[Kamaji]

As with the other cases, this was a ruling on a request for a motion preventing the federal government from enforcing a vaccine mandate while the underlying case goes forward; it was not a ruling on the substantive merits.