Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has indicated that he may vote with Republicans to strike down President Joe Biden’s wide-reaching private sector COVID-19 vaccine mandate, adding another threat to a list of growing legal challenges against the measure.
Through a political procedure instituted in the 1990s, Manchin’s defection would be enough to overturn the private sector mandate entirely.
The mandates would apply to all federal employees, including military personnel and federal contractors. They would also extend into the private sector, requiring that all firms with 100 employees or more mandate vaccination or weekly testing for the virus.
To enact the mandates, Biden asked the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to declare an emergency temporary standard. In the past, such standards have been used to guard employees against dangerous chemicals or other similar toxins.
OSHA said in a statement to The Epoch Times that the emergency temporary standard would “ensure [that a firm’s] workforce is fully vaccinated or require any workers who remain unvaccinated to produce a negative test result on at least a weekly basis before coming to work.”
In total, Biden’s mandate would extend to roughly 100 million Americans, nearly a third of all U.S. citizens.
The CRA, approved in the 1990s under Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, allows Congress to review and, if necessary, overturn new federal regulations put into place by federal administrations such as OSHA. If a rule is overturned under this procedure, federal administrations are forbidden from issuing the same or a substantially similar rule.
A CRA motion can be passed by a simple majority, without the risk of a filibuster. Thus, the motion could pass with a single Democratic defection. And Manchin, West Virginia’s moderate firebrand who has stood against his party on several occasions, has indicated that he may be willing to provide that one extra vote.
“I’ve been very supportive of the mandate for federal government, for military, for all the people that work on government payroll,” he told reporters. “I’ve been less enthused about the private sector.”
However, Manchin also refused to commit either way.
“We’re working through it,” he said.
Aside from congressional maneuvering, Biden’s effort to mass vaccinate Americans working in the private sector has hit a roadblock in the courts.
Private employers in seven states—Florida, Alabama, West Virginia, Utah, Iowa, Arkansas, and Texas—are permitted to mandate vaccines for their employees, but must allow employees to opt out on personal, moral, religious, health, or other grounds.
The mandate also has caused an almost unprecedented coalition of attorneys general from nearly half of the country—24 states—to band together in opposition to the measure.
Thus, the Senate is only one avenue being used to challenge the Biden vaccine mandates, which could still be rendered illegal or moot through other means.
Still, if Manchin were to vote with Republicans to strike down the OSHA rule, Biden would have little additional recourse and the CRA measure would permanently bar OSHA from instituting a significantly similar policy.