Tennessee Attorney General Herb Slatery and six other state attorneys general have filed a petition before a federal court challenging the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for private-sector employees.
This, according to a press release that members of Slatery’s staff emailed Friday.
The attorneys general have asked the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review the emergency temporary standard that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued. That standard requires that tens of millions of people get vaccinated.
Slatery, in the press release, called the mandate “an unprecedented expansion of emergency regulatory powers by a federal agency.”
“Its scope and breadth is only exceeded by its length (about 500 pages),” Slatery said.
“It also fails to consider the many steps already taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19 by individuals, employers and our state.”
In their petition, the attorneys general challenged the legality of the Biden administration’s Emergency Temporary Standard and asked the Sixth Circuit to review the validity of the mandate, arguing that OSHA lacks statutory and constitutional authority to issue it.
“The coalition argues that the power to issue emergency temporary standards was delegated to OSHA by Congress for the express purpose of protecting employees from grave dangers posed by exposure to substances like physically harmful chemicals or asbestos encountered at work,” according to Slatery’s press release.
“However, that authority does not extend to risks that are equally prevalent at work and in society at large. Just last year, OSHA refused to issue a nationwide emergency temporary standard for COVID-19 because ‘COVID-19 is a community-wide hazard that is not unique to the workplace.’”
The attorneys general also said that the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate prohibits sovereign states from enacting and enforcing their own policies to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“OSHA’s mandate claims to take away that power from the states and attempts to prevent policymakers from enacting policies that are beneficial to their respective states,” according to Slatery’s press release.
“The attorneys general ask the court to halt President Biden’s vaccine mandate until the court rules on the legitimacy of the rule.”
Slatery joined the lawsuit alongside attorneys general from Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Ohio, Oklahoma, and West Virginia, according to the press release.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, in a separate emailed press release, said “OSHA’s vaccination mandate represents a real threat to individual liberty.”
“As we have seen throughout the country, it is also a public policy disaster that displaces vulnerable workers and exacerbates a nationwide shortage of frontline workers, with severe consequences for all Americans,” Morrisey said.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
