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The Hill

Biden's wildly unconstitutional vaccine mandate
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In what may go down as one of the most significant attempts to expand the power of the presidency in modern history, President Biden announced on Sept. 9 a series of sweeping new vaccine mandates, which, together, could affect as many 100 million people.

Under the new rules, employees working at health care facilities receiving Medicaid and Medicare funding – the vast majority of health facilities in the United States – will be required to get vaccinated or submit a weekly test showing they have not contracted the COVID-19 virus.

Some federal employees, as well as employees working for federal contractors, will also be subject to the rule. But Biden’s rule also applies to people working at private businesses of 100 or more employees, including companies that do not receive federal funding.

Businesses that fail to impose the new rules on their workers will be fined $14,000 per violation by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

The decision to impose vaccines nationwide is one of the most stunning moves made by any president, a view bolstered by Biden’s speech announcing the plan, which included several explicit or implicit threats and warnings.

For example, at one point during the speech, Biden, speaking directly to the tens of millions of Americans who have chosen not to get vaccinated, said, “We’ve been patient. But our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us.”

Let’s put aside questions about whether people ought to choose to get vaccinated, or even whether businesses should have the authority to demand that their employees get vaccinated. Those are important questions, but not nearly as essential as whether the president has the power to demand that employees of private companies be subjected to a vaccine mandate. (Mandates imposed on employees of the federal government is a different story entirely.)

On that question, Biden has violated both the spirit and explicit language of the Constitution. If the president is permitted to run roughshod over our constitutional liberties in such a reckless manner, future presidents could further erode our freedoms and undermine the protections guaranteed to every citizen by the Constitution.

When confronted with questions about the constitutionality of the mandate, defenders of the president have insisted Biden has the authority to issue a national vaccine mandate under the vaguely written Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, which was created to improve safety conditions in the workplace.

But a federal statute cannot be interpreted to warrant an unconstitutional law, since the Constitution is the supreme law of the federal government. So, unless a legal scholar can cite a provision in the Constitution that gives the president the authority to mandate vaccines or even to simply regulate public health generally, the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 cannot be used to justify the mandate. And no such constitutional provision exists.

Others have pointed to a Supreme Court case from 1905, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, as proof that the president has the authority to issue a vaccine requirement.

It is true that the Supreme Court in Jacobson ruled that vaccine mandates can be imposed by a local government, so long as that government is not acting in violation of state law. And it’s also true the Massachusetts law cited in the case was even more intrusive than the policies now being pushed by the Biden administration. But this argument also fails spectacularly for one very important reason.

In Jacobson, the Supreme Court determined that a local vaccine mandate is permissible under the Constitution because states have maintained their police powers and authority to regulate public health under the 10th Amendment, which guarantees, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

But the decision in Jacobson does not include language indicating that the national government has the same authority. The case has nothing to do with federal vaccine mandates like the one imposed by Biden.

White House chief of staff 'confident' vaccine mandate will be upheld
Surgeon general: Administration 'prepared to defend' vaccine mandate
Nothing in the Constitution suggest that the executive branch can impose blanket vaccine regulations on private businesses or their employees.

The only question that remains is whether the Supreme Court will strike down Biden’s mandate. If the court refuses to get involved, the public will suffer for generations, as one presidential administration after another erodes its hard-won liberties.

Justin Haskins is director of the Stopping Socialism Project at The Heartland Institute, where he also serves as a research fellow and editorial director.

I agree.

I think the goal is to further collapse the economy.

SCOTUS decided
Give it up tasty and Peen
Let’s move forward now

The powers under the 10th are granted to the states, not the federal government.

And this is altogether different. The feds are trying to do a end around by using OSHA. We'll see if that flies or not.

It's strange that in the USA we are trying to prevent people from working, either through mandates or out and out bribery. We are paying people to stay home and not get a job.

That's one perspective. I guess. Although: we are not paying people money to stay at home, the covid emergency funding is ALL over to my knowledge. And no-one is prevented from working - they simply need to test regularly. So two arguments you put forward don't seem based on the reality of the situation.

Also - another perspective that might be applied - the Fed Govt. are trying to do everything in their power to protect Americans, and that maybe means (in this instance) protect them in spite of themselves.

The reality is I think we are still learning and we don't have all the answers - it will be a long time before we do. I don't know the right course of action - I simple prefer to listen to the overwhelming consensus among the scientists. It's not like the POTUS is winging it and coming up with is own whack theories and suggestions like we had before.

Can any of you imagine what would have happened had we had some of these people not wanting to take the Polio vaccine? Yikes.. I can understand a young person not understanding... They can get the facts about Polio, they are out there. But someone my age, damn folks,, Grow the hell up.

Nobody is trying to keep Americans from working. Get the damned vaccine and go to work. Vaccines have been mandated in order to go to school for decades. Stop supporting those throwing a temper tantrum and blaming the consequences for that tantrum on everyone else. Federal unemployment benefits ended over two months ago. Stop spreading that lie. They ended on September 6th.

Expiration of Federal Unemployment and Pandemic Benefits

https://dol.ny.gov/fedexp

There are medical and religious exemptions as part of the mandate. There are also alternatives (testing + masking) to the vaccine.

Artificial outrage.

They don't want to talk about that part.

Where do I sign up for being paid without getting a job? Unless you are talking about unemployment, a program we've had forever under both parties??? Or are you upset about people forced to stay home during the pandemic getting financial help through that time? Tha seems like a stupid thing to be upset about if it is... It seems to me that GOPers are butt hurt over the vaccine mandates but trying to twist that into a program to make people not work is crazy. The mandates all have an option for the unvaccinated to get regular testing and to wear masks, instead of being fully vaccinated. It's just that GOPers don't want to take on any personal responsibility for their contagious disease carrying selves... Covid kills. Get it through your heads already.

The Democrats don't follow any constitution. They are Tyrants.
If you don't know them by now, you will never ever ever know them.

So the fact you don't have to get the vaccine and instead can wear a mask and be tested makes them tyrants now?

j/c...

Likely headed to SCOTUS...

Not only artificial outrage, but outrage that then segues into saying it's part of a goal to further collapse the economy, based on nothing.

You can't make this stuff up.

Yeah, I wasn't even going to touch that response. Ridiculous.

The best example of artificial outrage is that of your president, mandating us while allowing thousands of the infected to cross our open southern border.

Then its off to scatter around America.

Artificial outrage at the citizens of this land!

Actual Shame on him!

New record set for arrests at the border all time. Nobody is "allowing" anything. You post lies while saying shame on others.

US recorded more than 1.6 million southern border arrests last year, highest on record

In September, the border agency made 185,515 arrests, bringing the total to 1,659,206 during fiscal year 2021, which runs from October through September, data shows.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/22/politics/us-border-patrol-record-arrests-2020/index.html

Republican governors lead attack on Biden vaccine mandate

Nov 5 (Reuters) - Republican governors began filing lawsuits on Friday to stop the Biden administration's requirement that nearly 2 million U.S. employers get workers tested or vaccinated for COVID-19, saying it trampled civil liberties.

After President Joe Biden, a Democrat, said on Thursday he will enforce the mandate starting Jan. 4, the states of Florida, Georgia and Alabama jointly sued in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

"The federal government can't just unilaterally impose medical policy under the guise of workplace regulation," Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said at a press conference on Thursday.

The lawsuit by the three states, as well as two trade groups, two private companies and two schools, said the mandate exceeded the administration's legal authority and conflicted with the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The Republican governors of more than a dozen other states also vowed to challenge the mandate in court and several cases were filed by private employers.

The regulation was implemented as a rarely used emergency rule from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal workplace regulator. read more

"Biden just announced his plan to wield OSHA to mandate vaccines on private businesses," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, wrote on Twitter on Thursday. "I'm announcing my plan to sue him once this illegal, unconstitutional regulation hits the Federal Register."

Texas is among the Republican-led states that have issued executive orders or enacted laws that ban COVID-19 vaccine mandates or prevent employers from seeking an employee's vaccination status.

OSHA said the rule takes precedence over conflicting state laws. It will take effect on Friday when it is due to be published in the federal register.

Responding to opponents of the rule, a senior administration official said OSHA clearly has the authority to act to protect workers from health and safety hazards. COVID-19 has killed more than 745,000 people in the United States.

Biden said in September that patience was wearing thin with the 30% of Americans who remain unvaccinated and who made up the vast majority of those hospitalized during the most recent wave of COVID-19 infections.

Mandates have been used by private businesses and local governments to drive up COVID-19 vaccination rates and courts have generally upheld them because states typically have the power to regulate healthcare within their borders.

Previous uses of OSHA's emergency rule have a history of being blocked in court. read more

Even if the mandate is upheld by the courts, some states still might not implement the rule.

OSHA applies to private workplaces in 29 states. The remaining states, including at least five with Republican leaders who have vowed to oppose the rule, have their own state-run OSHA that is required to adopt the federal rule.

OSHA issued a similar COVID-19 rule for healthcare settings in June, and in October the federal agency threatened to take over the state-run OSHA agencies in Arizona, South Carolina and Utah for failing to adopt it. Arizona and South Carolina have since said they have started the process to adopt the rule.

Officials in Utah did not respond to a request for comment.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/republican-governors-lead-attack-biden-vaccine-mandate-2021-11-05/

They don't deal in facts bro... you know this.

Nice try.
CNN as your source? (tell us about their anonymous sources and the Steele Dossier.)

So tell us where the illegals go after they have been detained.

Many are sent back but many are released into America aren't they?

The people of NY, Florida, Texas and Arizona can point them out to you.

YOU knocking a news source is just rich!

Are you referring to FOX News?

FOX told us from the beginning that CNN was lying about collusion and the Steele Dossier.

Only the ignorant fell for their crap.

But none of it was a lie. None of it. We have the pee tape ready for 2024.

Vaccinated people can spread the virus. Why don't they have to be tested? The goal is to stop the spread of the virus, right?

Why are we deflecting to talk about the border in this thread?

Just stop nit picking and get your jab.

Can you imagine the uproar from the left if trump had mandated this? Those lefties that support it now, under Biden, would've been lighting there hair on fire if trump had done it.

You're right and wrong. Unlike you I wouldn't drink bleach or shove a UV light up my ass on Trump's word alone for sure... but I would have taken the vaccine after Fauci, and the CDC said to do it. I was way more worried about getting covid than most due to pre-existing health issues. But you could well be right about most of the left. And what would you expect after the way Trump talked to and or about the left? He was never our President, his words.

See, this is exactly where you come across as stupid. You've called me a trumpian more times that I can count. Why can't you grow up?

I don't, haven't, and never will drink bleach, or shove a uv light up my ass, on ANY one's word.

Get this, dude: I've gotten the vaccine, and I really believe I had covid 2 january's ago.

Why do you hate so much? Why do you insinuate stuff of which you know nothing about? It's a sad look on your part. And in fact, if you didn't have me on ignore, which you don't and probably never did..............you would know I got the vaccine. Open your damn head, leave the hate somewhere else.

This stupid ass stuff you post is WHY I reply to you. yet you always find a way to blame others. Hey, how many people died of gunshots at Astroworld again? Oh, that's right, you found a tweet that said what you wanted it to, and you ran with it. Only to make you look foolish, again.

Probably because you support Trump in everything all the time on here. That will make people think you are Trumpian arch, GMAB. Now I might be way off the point, but the way you come across in here is 100% Trump supporter. Ask anyone.

The "source" of those numbers was The U.S. Border Patrol. That's the figure they gave. CNN just reported the numbers. Stop pretending to be stupid. At least I hope you're pretending.

Because of things like numbers and facts.

CDC: Unvaccinated 5 times more likely to get COVID again vs. those who are vaccinated

https://www.newschannel5.com/news/c...-covid-again-vs-those-who-are-vaccinated

Fully vaccinated less likely to pass COVID-19 to others

https://www.osfhealthcare.org/blog/fully-vaccinated-less-likely-to-pass-covid-19-to-others/

Since 90% of those hospitalized and dying are among the unvaccinated, this question has been addressed repeatedly. The main objective is to stop people from dying, being hospitalized ansd having long haul effects from covid. I'm not sure how many more times it will need to be repeated until people get the message.

Can you imagine people just making BS up when even while Trump was president the same people you speak of were listening to the health experts and not politicians? Because that's the only real difference here. One side listens to quack politicians rather than medical and viral experts. One side thinking doing what's right to keep Americans safe is attacking their "freedumb". The other side listens to those health and viral experts. Just because you think everything is about politics. My family dying or being protected does not.

I doubt it would be much of an uproar.... The Left has been saying from the beginning... He'd have been congratulated.. Just like he was for pushing to get the vaccine in the first place...

By the way,, a little off topic,, but Congrats to Boy name Tom....

Yes, the facts are out there. And the facts say that many millions of Americans were highly skeptical of the polio vaccine after it was introduced and before it finished it's first trial on a large number of kids. Even after that there was significant skepticism from some people. There were a lot of people who didn't want to get it.

And it was mandated in order for any person to go to school because if not, they would have allowed stupidity to win.

One school district at a time... Never before in our history has a president mandated, nationally, that adults get a medical treatment as a condition of their employment. He probably has broader leverage to do this with federal employees, but then he has reached to basically anybody who does work with federal employees, and he is using OSHA as an end run to force it on everybody else. Whether you think it's a good idea or not, whether you think it separates the stupid people from the smart people like yourself or not, what you are seeing is relatively unprecedented in terms of presidential use of power... so the fact that some people are concerned about the constitutionality of it, the long term impacts of the precedents being set, etc seems fairly normal to me. In fact, any time the government or the president unilaterally decides to grant themselves more power and authority, I think it should be seriously challenged.

And I understand how it can be viewed that way. Yet at the same time this has already killed close to one million Americans and there is no sign that will be ending soon. And there's two facts I consider when looking at this situation. The first is that it most certainly is the number one job of OSHA to keep the work place safe. There's also factually no question that the work place is much less safe when there are unvaccinated people in that work place.

And the worst part of all of that, is the quack politicians who keep championing the antivax crap, are all vaccinated. Trump is vaccinated. So they themselves listen, and then try to convince their followers to ignore it. It baffling that people still fall for it.

Trump pushed the vaccine, got the vaccine, and then still talked about the COVID hoax nonstop.

So, there is an older extended family member that tried to argue all the GOPer antivaccination points with me... Looked her square in the eyes and asked her how long she protested before getting the smallpox and polio vaccines? I just got a dirty look. But that ended the argument.