On December 7, 2021, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia preliminarily enjoined President Joe Biden’s Executive Order (EO) 14042 (requiring vaccinations for employees of federal contractors) nationwide. The injunction follows a more limited injunction that issued last week. With the federal contractor vaccination requirement now sidelined along with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) COVID-19 vaccine emergency temporary standard (ETS) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ healthcare rules, the administration is currently 0–3 in its efforts to mandate vaccinations in private-sector workplaces (the vaccination requirement applicable to federal employees remains in place). Of course, this is just the current state of affairs—the litigation in all three challenges could still unfold in a variety of ways. In enjoining EO 14042, the court wrote:
The Court finds that Plaintiffs have a likelihood of proving that Congress, through the language it used, did not clearly authorize the President to issue the kind of mandate contained in EO 14042, as EO 14042 goes far beyond addressing administrative and management issues in order to promote efficiency and economy in procurement and contracting, and instead, in application, works as a regulation of public health, which is not clearly authorized under the Procurement Act.
Leigh M. Nason has the details.
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