A U.S. judge on Tuesday blocked the Biden administration’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate for employees of federal contractors, the latest of several recent early rulings against federal vaccine requirements in the workplace.
U.S. District Judge R. Stan Baker in Savannah, Georgia, issued a nationwide preliminary injunction against the mandate after concluding that federal procurement law didn’t give the administration the clear authority to impose the vaccine rules for contractors.
The mandate “goes far beyond addressing administrative and management issues” related to contracts and instead “works as a regulation of public health, which is not clearly authorized under the Procurement Act,” Judge Baker wrote.
The judge, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, said the mandate imposed vast economic burdens on employers and workers, which he said further tilted the scales in favor of an injunction that blocked the mandate for now while further litigation continues.
The contractor requirements were set to go into effect next month.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the Biden administration remained confident of its legal authority to implement Covid-19 vaccine requirements and would defend its mandate for federal contractors in court.
“The reason that we proposed these requirements is that we know they work and we are confident in our ability legally to make these happen across the country,” Ms. Psaki told reporters Tuesday.
Ms. Psaki added that 92% of government employees covered by President Biden’s vaccine mandate for federal workers had been vaccinated and that many large companies had boosted their vaccination rates by imposing similar requirements.
The ruling came in a case brought by Georgia and six other states.
“We will continue to stand up for the rule of law to protect our state and our citizens from this unconstitutional and unprecedented federal overreach,” Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, a Republican, said on Twitter.
The decision follows a similar ruling by a Kentucky federal judge last week that blocked the vaccine mandate for contractors in three states.
Several related Biden administration vaccine requirements are on hold for now because of litigation.
A federal appeals court in Cincinnati is currently considering whether to reinstate the administration’s rules that require many employers to ensure their workers are vaccinated or tested weekly for Covid-19. That mandate was issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and applies to businesses with 100 or more employees.
The administration is separately appealing a ruling last week that blocked enforcement of a requirement that millions of healthcare workers be vaccinated against Covid-19.
— Sabrina Siddiqui contributed to this article.
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Appeared in the December 8, 2021, print edition as ‘U.S. Vaccine Mandate For Contractors Halted.’
