Monday, November 15, 2021

Fifth Circuit v. Biden's Employer Vaxx Mandate: Court Issues Stay (No-go)

 

Located in this Federal Building in New Orleans
(Covers LA, MS, and TX)

Big story here from NBC News vis-à-vis GOP conservative court has no regard for human life with this headline and words in their ruling:

“Appeals court upholds order freezing Biden vaccine rule for employers”

A three-judge panel (heavily conservative) rejected the DOJ arguments for lifting a previous order temporarily blocking the Biden rule.

A federal appeals court (November 12) upheld its previous order temporarily blocking President Biden's vaccine and testing mandate for large companies, rejecting DOJ’s request to lift the freeze

A three-judge panel for the Louisiana-based Fifth Circuit said in a 24-page ruling that the Biden administration's order their summary “…exposes companies to severe financial risk if they refuse or fail to comply, and threatens to decimate their workforces.”

The court further wrote:On the dubious assumption that the mandate does pass constitutional muster, which we need not decide today, it is nonetheless fatally flawed on its own terms.”

The judges said the court's earlier stay was reaffirmed pending a full judicial review. The *vaccine rule was announced by the OSHA earlier this month and scheduled to take effect January 4. It requires businesses with 100 or more employees to ensure their workforces are fully vaccinated or require workers who aren't vaccinated to wear masks and show negative COVID-19 test results at least once a week. Employers can face fines for not complying.

The rule summary (from the total 490 pages in .pdf format:

Summary: The OSHA is issuing an emergency temporary standard (ETS) to protect unvaccinated employees of large employers (100 or more employees) from the risk of contracting COVID-19 by strongly encouraging vaccination.

Covered employers must: Develop, implement, and enforce a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy, with an exception for employers that instead adopt a policy requiring employees to either get vaccinated or elect to undergo regular COVID-19 testing and wear a face covering at work in lieu of vaccination.

A group of companies and individuals, including churches, restaurants and grocers, filed the suit shortly the rule was announced, seeking a permanent injunction. They were joined by LA, MS, SC, TX, and UT.  

The groups argued that OSHA usurped its authority by issuing the sweeping mandate, and that COVID-19 is not a workplace hazard.

They argued the rule makes it harder to maintain enough workers in a tight labor market.

The judges sided with those arguments.

My 2 Cents: I am NOT a lawyer and don't pretend to be one, either, but I strongly believe this is a very poor court opinion. 

Child Abuse Mr. and Mrs. Anti Vaxxers

Also, allowing kids to hold up anti-vaxx signs and standing way up in the air like that one above to me is child abuse.

It also seems this court forgot the 1905 USSC ruling that said in essence: Mandates for vaccinations are necessary to stop a pandemic and preserve life. That case was Jacobson vs. Massachusetts and the USSC ruled against Jacobson (7-2).

Facts of that case: A Massachusetts law allowed cities to require residents to be vaccinated against the smallpox pandemic.

Cambridge, MA adopted such an ordinance, with some exceptions. Plaintiff Jacobson, a Swedish pastor, refused to comply with the requirement and was fined five dollars saying it violated his 14th Amendment rights.

The Question before the Court: Did the mandatory vaccination law violate Jacobson's Fourteenth Amendment right to liberty?​ The high-court said “No” it did not.

Final Conclusion: The Court held that the law was a legitimate exercise of the state's police power to protect the public health and safety of its citizens.​

Local boards of health determined when mandatory vaccinations were needed, thus making the requirement neither unreasonable nor arbitrarily imposed.​

In short the court established the “reasonableness test” in such matters vis-à-vis protecting life during a pandemic like that one and the current one today.

Why didn't that precedence apply here, I wonder?

Thanks for stopping by.


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