On Nov. 17, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), complying with a federal court order, suspended enforcement of its COVID-19 mandate that would have forced about 31 million unvaccinated Americans working for private businesses essentially to choose between getting themselves vaccinated against the virus or jeopardizing their jobs.
The order, issued by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision on Nov. 12, was a constitutional victory against using the power of the federal government to dictate people’s individual health decisions. But it also was something more: a moral victory against the Biden administration’s unrelenting campaign, fully supported by the mainstream media, to punish people for dissenting from the administration’s particular medical stance on COVID.
It was, in short, a victory against tyranny. I write this is as someone who promptly got vaccinated as soon as the vaccines became widely available and would urge others to do so as well. But there are people who object, whether for religious reasons (there’s no specific religious exemption in the OSHA mandate), or because they have already had COVID-19 and are naturally immune, or because they don’t want to be experimented on with vaccines hastily rushed to approval. The last category may account for the outsize proportion of blacks resisting vaccination; they have long memories of the Tuskegee syphilis experiments. Many of these people are health workers and first responders who put their lives on the line during the first, highly ravaging months of COVID-19 in early 2020. They deserve respect for their personal decisions.
Two days later, on Nov. 6, the 5th Circuit, in a lawsuit filed by five states along with companies, individuals, and religious groups, issued a temporary stay on enforcing the mandate. The White House breezily announced that it had no intention of complying with the order.
White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre advised employers to go ahead with requiring their employers to get vaccinated or tested regardless of what the court said.
The 5th’s Circuit’s Nov. 12 decision, extending the stay until after a full trial on the merits, threw a bucket of cold water on this idea that the federal government can do whatever it wants to force its citizens to comply with its favored medical strategies—and punish them for not doing so.
It came up with the Occupational Safety and Health Act, enacted in 1970 to deal with slippery factory floors and exposure to toxic chemicals. The OSHA mandate “grossly exceeds OSHA’s statutory authority,” Engelhardt said.
The Constitution makes it clear that the federal government is a government of limited powers, and it’s especially limited in its ability to impose direct obligations upon its citizens. The 5th Circuit’s ruling made it clear that these limits are real. And fortunately, as the 5th Circuit also made clear, the federal government is limited in its ability to issue decrees that would destroy the livelihoods of, or make social outcasts of, dissenters from prevailing ideologies, medical or otherwise.
Of course, as might be expected, the Biden White House is still pretending that court rulings don’t mean anything, and that businesses should pretend likewise and forge ahead to meet the Jan. 4 vaccination deadline.
“That was our message after the first stay issued by the 5th Circuit,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Nov. 18, the day after the deadline was suspended. “That remains our message, and nothing has changed.”