Fitch joins legal push back on mandates
Wednesday, Feb. 16, Attorney General Lynn Fitch and 17 other state Attorneys General filed an amicus brief in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in support of Georgia’s multistate challenge against the Biden Administration’s mandate that employees of federal contractors and subcontractors be vaccinated or face losing their jobs.
“President Biden’s insistence on universal vaccination is putting people’s liberty and jobs at risk,” said Attorney General Lynn Fitch. “Despite losing time and again in court because his mandates reach far beyond the authority of the federal bureaucracy, he continues to double down on this misguided and unconstitutional policy. I encourage people to be vaccinated, but they need to decide for themselves. They do not need the White House to decide for them.”
The federal contractor mandate, one of four that the President has imposed on American workers, impacts one-fifth of the American workforce. In the Georgia case, the district court judge stayed implementation of the mandate nationwide and the U.S. Department of Justice appealed.
Arguing in support of the stay and against the mandate, the amicus brief filed notes, “The President’s procurement authorities are simply not a ‘work-around’ to mandate vaccines for one-fifth of the Nation’s workforce…. And were the government right that [the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act] permits anything that might improve the efficiency of government procurement, then the statute would swallow whole vast swathes of the federal regulatory apparatus—from public health, to immigration, to antidiscrimination.”
In a separate case filed by Mississippi, Indiana, and Louisiana in November, a federal district court also stayed the mandate, but only for the state contracting entities in those three states. Attorney General Fitch continues to fight against the mandate in that case, as well.
Today’s amicus brief was filed by the Attorneys General of Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas.
