'A bridge too far': Judge rules against vaccine mandate for federal workers

For those keeping score, the Biden administration is now one for three on vaccine mandates. Following the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down a vaccine-or-test mandate for private employers but uphold it of health care workers, a federal judge in Texas has halted the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for federal employees.

“This case is not about whether folks should get vaccinated against COVID-19 — the court believes they should,” Judge Jeffrey Brown wrote, according to Federal News Network. “It is not even about the federal government’s power, exercised properly, to mandate vaccination of its employees. It is instead about whether the president can, with the stroke of a pen and without the input of Congress, require millions of federal employees to undergo a medical procedure as a condition of their employment. That, under the current state of the law as just recently expressed by the Supreme Court, is a bridge too far.”

The government had told the court that federal employees could start being disciplined for being unvaccinated as soon as Jan. 21. The timing, the judge ruled, put those employees at risk of “imminent harm” and required his order to take effect the same day.

Brown relied partly on the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling striking down the OSHA vaccine mandate for large private employers. He said that case made clear that OSHA can impose workplace safety standards but not public health measures. “Similarly, [the law] authorizes the president to regulate the workplace conduct of executive-branch employees but not their conduct in general,” Brown wrote.

The executive order that Brown enjoined applied specifically to federal civilian employees. The ruling did not appear to have an immediate effect on the Defense Department’s separate vaccine mandate for uniformed members of the military.

Explaining his decision to apply the injunction to all federal agencies nationwide, the judge said it would be too complicated to block the mandate’s enforcement only for the thousands of employees the plaintiffs represented. He found at least some of them inevitably would be fired if the vaccine requirement weren’t blocked.

The U.S. Justice Department plans to appeal the ruling. A separate appeal seeking to reverse a Georgia court’s injunction of the contractor mandate already is under way before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“We are confident in our legal authority here,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said at a briefing shortly after the ruling. She added that 98% of federal employees were vaccinated as of Friday.