JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — More than two dozen Republican-led states filed lawsuits Friday challenging President Joe Biden’s vaccine requirement for private companies, setting up a high-stakes legal showdown pitting federal authority against states’ rights.
The requirement issued Thursday by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration applies to businesses with more than 100 employees. Their workers must be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4 or face mask requirements and weekly tests. The lawsuits ask courts to decide whether the administration’s effort to curtail the pandemic represents a federal power grab and usurps the authority of states to set health policy.
At least 27 states filed lawsuits challenging the rule.
“This mandate is unconstitutional, unlawful, and unwise,” Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said in a court filing in the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of 11 states.
The Biden administration has been encouraging widespread vaccinations as the quickest way out of the pandemic. A White House spokeswoman said Thursday that the mandate was intended to halt the spread of a disease that has claimed more than 750,000 lives in the U.S.
The administration says it is confident that its requirement, which includes penalties of nearly $14,000 per violation, will withstand legal challenges in part because its safety rules pre-empt state laws.
Seema Nanda, solicitor for the U.S. Department of Labor, said in a statement Friday that the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act gives OSHA the authority to act quickly during an emergency if it finds workers are subject to a grave danger.
The agency contends its temporary rule also preempts any state or local bans on employers’ ability to require vaccines.
“We are fully prepared to defend this standard in court,” Nanda said.
Lawrence Gostin, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and director of the World Health Organization’s center on health law, said the half-century-old law that created OSHA gives it the power to set minimum workplace safety measures.
“I think that Biden is on rock-solid legal ground,” he said.
Critics have taken aim at some aspects of the requirement, including that it was adopted as an emergency measure rather than after the agency’s regular rule-making process.
“This is a real emergency,” said Gostin, who has spoken with the Biden administration about the requirement. “In fact, it’s a national crisis. Any delay would cause thousands of deaths.”