Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton
Tony Gutierrez | AP
Texas challenged the Biden government on Friday over its Covid vaccine mandate for private companies, arguing that the new federal regulations were unconstitutional.
Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a petition for review with the US 5th Court of Appeals to challenge the validity of the government’s mandate. Paxton said he will soon be filing a motion asking the court to suspend the mandate.
Paxton described the vaccine mandate in a statement as “a breathtaking abuse of federal power” that was “thoroughly unconstitutional”. He argued that the mandate went beyond the “limited powers and specific responsibilities” of the labor protection agency, which announced the new workplace regulations earlier this week.
The attorneys general of Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Utah joined the petition along with several companies.
OSHA, which oversees occupational safety for the Department of Labor, developed the vaccine mandate under the Emergency Agency, which enables the agency to shorten the normal process of issuing new occupational safety standards, which often takes years.
Labor ministry’s top lawyer, Seema Nanda, said in a statement Friday that the Biden government is “fully prepared to defend this standard in court.”
“The Occupational Safety and Health Act explicitly gives OSHA the power to act quickly in an emergency if the agency determines that workers are at great risk and a new standard is needed to protect them,” said Nanda, the attorney of the Ministry of Labor.
Nanda said the emergency safety standard “prevents any state or local requirement that prohibits or restricts an employer’s authority to require vaccinations, face covering, or testing.”
Texas Governor Greg Abbott last month banned vaccine mandates through an executive order. Abbott had asked the state legislature to replace its order with law, but the legislation found the legislature unsavory after several corporate groups opposed the state’s ban on vaccine mandates.
Abbott also banned local governments from requiring the wear of masks through an executive order in May. Several school districts sued Abbott over the ruling.
United States President Joe Biden will give an update on the Covid-19 Response and Vaccination program on October 14, 2021 in the South Court Auditorium of the White House in Washington, DC.
Nicholas Comb | AFP | Getty Images
“The question we always have that we ask Republicans is, why are they in the way? Why do they stand in the way of trying to protect and save lives? That’s all we’re trying to do. ”House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Thursday.
The vaccination mandate, which applies to companies with 100 or more employees, came into force on the Friday after it was published in the federal register.
The mandate requires companies that their employees have received their vaccinations by January 4th or submit a negative Covid test at least once a week. Unvaccinated workers must wear masks indoors from December 5th. The mandates include 84 million private sector employees.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott speaks during the Houston Region Business Coalition’s monthly meeting October 27, 2021 in Houston, Texas.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
Paxton and almost every other Republican attorney general in the United States, in a letter to President Joe Biden in September, threatened to use “every available legal option” to end the mandate.
Republicans and some industry lobbyists have claimed the current Covid threat is not a serious threat, the Biden administration said. They point to the increasing number of vaccinations and natural immunity in the US to previous infections, as well as the containment measures already in place by many companies in the workplace.
“A virus that has killed more than 745,000 Americans with more than 70,000 new cases per day is clearly a health hazard right now that poses a serious threat to workers,” Nanda said during a news conference Thursday.
