When President Joe Biden announced on September 9 the rollout of a new COVID vaccine mandate for private companies with at least 100 employees, many were taken aback by the bold, totalitarian move by the Democrat politician. Yet, a full month after the announcement, no measure has been issued by the Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration or OSHA, the organization established "to ensure safe and healthful working conditions for workers by setting and enforcing standards and by providing training, outreach, education and assistance."
Instead, nearly two dozen Republican attorneys general are left waiting in the wings to file lawsuits against the Biden administration for enacting the COVID vaccine mandate, which to this day still does not exist, as per WND. These lawsuits have not been filed because there is no actual mandate for them to bring to court.
What the Biden administration has done instead, is to impose a public perception of a COVID vaccine mandate after an "unusual rule-making process" called an emergency temporary standard or ETS. But even through this ETS system, OSHA says it will take up to six months for any measure to go into effect after it is issued in the Federal Register. This has not occurred yet, specifically over the Biden administration's COVID vaccine mandate. Yet, private companies are announcing their own COVID vaccine mandate deadlines of around December 2021.
"Using the ETS procedure instead of normal federal rule-making processes both allows the Biden administration to push its demands faster and without any public input or requirement of responding to public input, which is normally required of even legally laughable federal rule-making like this one would be," Joy Pullman of The Federalist argued. "That is part of why ETS rules have been overwhelmingly overturned in courts."
As per David Rivkin Jr. and Robert Alt whose story was published in the Wall Street Journal, the OSHA has used such legal authority "only 10 times in 50 years," adding that "Courts have decided challenges to six of those standards, nixing five and upholding only one."
Moreover, Bruce Atkinson also wrote in the Wall Street Journal that "The mandate's nonexistence shields the Biden administration from legal challenges that may ultimately restrict the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's authority." However, the COVID vaccine mandate is "still effective at compelling industries and companies into compliance," and is "particularly effective on industries and companies that are dependent on federal spending or the goodwill of federal regulators."
This leads to the conclusion that the Biden administration's COVID vaccine mandate is merely a press release to push for higher vaccination rates across the board. But by the time Republican leaders could take them to court, people will have been forced to get the vaccine or will have been forced out of their jobs, or even worse, will have to be treated as second-class citizens in their own country due to their non-compliance and their vaccination status.
