The Biden administration on Tuesday requested the U.S. 6th Court of Appeals to dismiss an order from a separate federal appeals court and reinstate its COVID vaccine mandate to be carried out by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration or OSHA for private entities with at least 100 employees.
OSHA's emergency temporary standard, which enforces the Biden administration's COVID vaccine mandate for the private sector, was met with several lawsuits which was then combined into one and forwarded to the 6th Circuit Court in Cincinnati, Ohio, which is composed of 11 Republican appointed judges and 5 Democrat appointed judges.
According to The Epoch Times, it only took the U.S. 5th Court of Appeals in Louisiana 48 hours to block OSHA's emergency temporary standard, which was supposed to go into effect on January 4. The 5th Court of Appeals had issued an order that blocked the mandate, during which the panel of judges underscored their previous injunction, saying that the Biden administration's COVID vaccine mandate will most likely be ruled unconstitutional.
On Tuesday, the Biden administration filed court papers claiming that the panel of the 5th Circuit misinterpreted OSHA's emergency temporary standard, arguing that "the speculative compliance costs and similar harms asserted by regulated parties cannot overcome the extraordinary harms to the public interest detailed above." White House attorneys also argued that delaying the COVID vaccine mandate will cost the U.S. many lives daily and will contribute to increased hospitalizations and "tremendous expenses" that they described as "a confluence of harms of the highest order."
According to WND, the lawsuits against the Biden administration's COVID vaccine mandate argues that the OSHA is involved in "unconstitutional government overreach in the private sector." If private businesses fail to comply with the OSHA's emergency temporary stanfard, they will have to pay up to $13,653 per violation or $136,532 for repeated violations or those who intentionally defy the order. About 84 million American workers are affected by OSHA's emergency temporary standard.
The 5th Court of Appeals's Judge Kurt Engelhardt previously wrote that he had "grave" concerns over the constitutionality of the rule, describing the mandate in the majority opinion as "staggeringly overbroad." The opinion also described the Biden administration's COVID vaccine mandate as "a one-size-fits-all sledgehammer that makes hardly any attempt to account for differences in workplaces (and workers)."
Last week, OSHA pledged to halt the enforcement of the COVID vaccine mandate, but expressed confidence that the Biden administration would win in the courts. The White House also pushed businesses to ignore the courts' decision and push forward with inoculating its workers.
Meanwhile, a recent study published by employee experience software company Qualtrics showed that among 1,309 surveyed employees, more than half or 58% support the Biden administration's executive order mandating COVID vaccines in some workplaces and more than half or 55% would consider reporting a co-worker for violating the vaccination rules, USA Today reported.
