Friday, January 21, Judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown, of the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Galveston, ruled in favor of the medical privacy and health freedom of 3.5 million federal workers who sought injunctive relief against Joe Biden’s mRNA gene vector injection mandate of said federal employees.
3.5 million federal employees. That, itself, is a problem. But here’s the legal info…
In the case “Feds for Medical Freedom et al. v Biden et al.” Judge Brown drew a constitutional distinction between a US President instituting such a mandate for federal employees, and the Congress arranging rules for employees whom, under passed legislation, it says the Executive Branch can hire.
The court notes at the outset that this case is not about whether folks should get vaccinated against COVID-19—the court believes they should. It is not even about the federal government’s power, exercised properly, to mandate vaccination of its employees. It is instead about whether the President can, with the stroke of a pen and without the input of Congress, 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.
So, here we see Judge Brown deferring to “the current state of the law as just recently expressed by the Supreme Court,” something with which one can disagree, either foundationally as a matter of the erroneous and misguided tradition of “stare decisis” (aka “let the decision of the higher court stand”) or as a matter of one’s view of the SCOTUS decision, itself. But Judge Brown’s overview of the current landscape of all four of the legal challenges to Biden’s jab mandates is well worth repeating.
Let’s begin with his update on the recent Supreme Court of the US (SCOTUS) rulings concerning the Biden mandate on private business, and Biden’s mandate on employees (or those doing work under beneficiaries of) the Center for Medicare/Medicaid Services (CMS):
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biden Administration has put out four mandates requiring vaccination in various contexts. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court ruled on challenges to two of those mandates. For one, a rule issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) concerning businesses with 100 or more employees, the Court determined the plaintiffs would likely succeed on the merits and so granted preliminary relief. See Nat’l Fed’n Indep. Bus. v. OSHA, 595 U.S. ___ (2022) [hereinafter NFIB]. For the second, a rule issued by the Secretary of Health and Human Services concerning healthcare facilities receiving Medicare and Medicaid funding, the Court allowed the mandate to go into effect. See Biden v. Missouri, 595 U.S. ___ (2022).
That covers the recent SCOTUS rulings, but misses the early January Federal Court ruling in favor of 35 US Navy members who stood against being vaccinated -- a case which other Navy members have turned into a larger, class-action suit.
Now, thanks to Judge Brown’s opinion issued Friday, we can see the other two of the five areas of legal wrangling with Biden, and the import of this particular ruling:
In this case, the plaintiffs challenge the other two mandates. One compels each business contracting with the federal government to require its employees to be vaccinated or lose its contract. Exec. Order No. 14042, Ensuring Adequate COVID Safety Protocols for Federal Contractors, 86 Fed. Reg. 50,985 (Sept. 9, 2021). Because that order has been enjoined nationwide, Georgia v. Biden, No. 1:21-CV-163, 2021 WL 5779939, at *12 (S.D. Ga. Dec. 7, 2021), this court declines to grant any further preliminary relief. The other mandate requires that all federal employees be vaccinated— or obtain a religious or medical exemption—or else face termination. See Exec. Order No. 14043, Requiring Coronavirus Disease 2019 Vaccination for Federal Employees, 86 Fed. Reg. 50,989 (Sept. 9, 2021) [hereinafter federal[1]worker mandate].
So, we see that Brown refers to the recent lower court ruling in Georgia v Biden, we can note that the court simply ruled that Biden likely exceeded the “power” given him by the legislature when he issued his executive order to tell contractors who make deals the the feds that they have to be jabbed.
Brown’s focus thus lies on the final factor that had not – until it reached him – been fully explored: the mandate on actual federal employees not tied to CMS.
Writes Brown:
The federal-worker mandate was issued last year on September 9. At first, federal agencies were to begin disciplining non-compliant employees at the end of November. But as that date approached, the government announced that agencies should wait until after the new year.
In his opinion, Judge Brown explored what he viewed would be the limits of “workplace conduct” versus civilian life, and how the jab mandate encompasses all of one’s life if one complies, and he also acknowledged the fact that what GOVERNMENT usually claims is the “public interest” really has nothing to do with actual interests or rights. The terminology of “interest” needs to be determined by individuals, not imposed on them under the rubric of “the public” interest, which sacrifices the individual to the agenda of the state:
Additionally, as the Fifth Circuit has observed, “[t]he public interest is also served by maintaining our constitutional structure and maintaining the liberty of individuals to make intensely personal decisions according to their own convictions.” OSHA, 17 F.4th at 618. The court added that the government has no legitimate interest in enforcing “an unlawful” mandate. Id. All in all, this court has determined that the balance of the equities tips in the plaintiffs’ favor, and that enjoining the federal-worker mandate is in the public interest.
So that points us back to the SCOTUS, because the “for the little guy” Biden Administration immediately filed an appeal, and the case undoubtedly will (with the expenditure of a lot more of our money) be brought to the politically-appointed “Justices” of the Supreme Court.
It remains to be seen how they will rule, should that happen. Right now, this appears to be another victory against the Biden mandates.
Related: Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks Biden's Vax Mandate for Large Employers | MRCTV
Leftists ignoring violent crimes that kill cops and kids are too busy trying to stop people from going into restaurants for not having their papers.@RealBrittHughes is back with another Reality Check. pic.twitter.com/4CPiKu90hU
— MRCTV (@mrctv) January 25, 2022