A federal appeals court reaffirmed a pause on the Biden administration’s new COVID-19 vaccine mandate for private businesses, slamming the unprecedented rule as “staggeringly overbroad” and “fatally flawed.”
A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that the mandate, issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) as an emergency temporary standard earlier this month, “grossly exceeds OSHA’s statutory authority.”
The panel rejected an appeal by the Biden Justice Department to lift a stay imposed by the court last week.
The vaccine mandate “threatens to substantially burden the liberty interests of reluctant individual recipients,” Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt, a Trump appointee, wrote for the panel. Read more…